


Kotonari

by Emmaekaywrites



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-04-05 09:07:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 56,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14040873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmaekaywrites/pseuds/Emmaekaywrites
Summary: Kotonari takes place a few months after the events in Keiyaku. Read Keiyaku first or the first chapter of Kotonari will totally spoil that entire work for you! The world visited in Keiyaku gets a lot more detail and Kotonari spends a lot more time with other characters. There is more fluff than smut, but there are a few explicit sex scenes. More than one chapter will contain graphic violence, and one chapter contains extreme violence against a child.





	1. Birth

**Chapter One – Birth**

**Part One:**

“There’s one thing,” Vegeta began, addressing his father over the _shogi_  board, “that I never understood.”

The king snorted. “Just one? I could list the things you don’t understand, given time and the appropriate length of writing paper.”

Tiles snapped against the board and Vegeta clicked his teeth, his trademark response when no biting remark came to mind. “Tch. About the fasting, I mean.”

“Well, my son, when a male and a female feel a deep bond –“

“Were you always this sarcastic?”

The king laughed. “What is this ‘one thing?”

“Before Bulma arrived, you were so insistant that I find a woman to fast. Insistent to the point of threatening me, to the point of desperation. That day,” Vegeta recalled, snapping another tile down, “you seemed almost afraid of some… consequence if I did not choose a partner immediately.”

“Mm. I was not afraid.”

“Your eyes were afraid.”

“Vegeta, I was not afraid. But. If I were afraid, what do you suspect the cause of that fear to have been? Have you ever known your King, your father, to fear anything?”

Vegeta played a tile more, and his father took his turn languidly. Had he ever known his father to show fear? What did a King with a Kingdom undisputed ever fear? Vegeta turned the thought over and over in his mind.

A tile snapped against the board.

“I will tell you, I fear one thing, son.”

Vegeta’s hand dropped.

“There is yet one foe in this world I fear. It is not disease or death, or any such abstract concept. I will embrace my death when it comes and I will fight any disease like I would any man – ruthlessly. It is a person. Can you fathom who it might be?”

Vegeta played his tile as his mother swept into the room. She was speaking to several attendants about her plans for the day and important meetings she must take, about Bulma’s doctor arriving soon and reminding her ladies-in-waiting that she must be informed the very second that doctor arrived. She broke off her stream of directions and demands to cross over to her husband and son.

She draped herself over the King’s broad left shoulder, lazily surveying the board. “You’re losing, my King.”

“I am aware, Pea,” he said mirthlessly, but kissing her hand before giving it a squeeze and letting it drop again.

Queen Pea reached over her husband and snapped a tile over her son’s king piece. “Match.”

Both the King and the Prince dropped their jaws – neither had seen the winning move staring them in the face. Prince Vegeta had thought he was toying with his father – victory assured – but had stepped into a trap the King hadn’t even intended to set.

The queen sashayed away, back to her attendants to continue an endless stream of duties, as the men continued to puzzle.

“And now you know,” the King began, “the identity of the one and only person in this universe who I fear.”

“Mother?”

“The queen had not been pleased with your long absence, nor with the death of your brother, for at least a full sun cycle before you came home. She was ready to go out into the stars to find and actually fight you – actually  _fight you_ , Vegeta – to force you to return. The fact is, she was insistent that you come home and fast to someone because she was lonely for her children.”

“I see.”

“And when she is  _insistent,_ it is of me. Constantly. Daily. Hourly. Minutely. There are a limited number of times I can stand to be berated by that woman, and I had reached my limit the day your boots hit Vegetasei.”

Vegeta laughed, a chuckle at first that built to a full laugh, head thrown back. What death? What frailty? What abdication? His father was tired of his mother’s endless bitching, and took it out on him.

The King joined his son’s laughter until both men were redoubled in belly shaking hilarity.

—  
  


“Ohh, babies, come ouuuut,” Bulma moaned painfully, rubbing her swollen belly. “You have to be big enough now, don’t you? I’ll send your father in there!”

“Will you now?” Vegeta stood in the doorway of their study, Bulma sprawled out before him on the fourth couch they’d had this week. The first – too soft, the second – too firm, the third – no reason, it just made Bulma cry to look at it.

“Ve-ge-taaaaaaa, why won’t the babies come? It’s been one thousand years.”

“It has been 38-41 weeks, depending on when you became pregnant.”

“IT’S BEEN LONGER THAN THAT.”

Vegeta smirked and crossed the room to his beloved one – his beloved ones. He knelt down at the couch and put his head on Bulma’s thigh, mouth facing the dome of her womb and pressed a soft kiss to her flesh. “Little Saiyans, your mother wishes to meet you. Your grandmother wishes to meet you.”

Bulma laid her head back on a pillow and felt herself beginning to cry – again – for no reason other than the gentle timbre of her lover’s voice.

“Little warriors, come out and see your people.

Little royals, come out and see the land.

Little prince and little princess

Your Kingdom is at hand.”

The words were an old royal Saiyan nursery rhyme, and technically, it should have been “little prince OR little princess” but Vegeta had decided long ago that there was one of each in there. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. Bulma hadn’t disputed it – in fact, she agreed with him. There were no ultrasounds, nothing like the prenatal care on Earth, but there were doctors and doulas who could read the ki signatures of the babies. Queen Pea sent for a specialist with knowledge of the Saiyan Gemini, but he was across the planet and refused to travel by pod. He should be in Asket soon, but until he arrived, Bulma was uncomfortable and weepy and from somewhere down in the pit of her stomach, she was worried about the babies, but didn’t know why.

Vegeta continued humming wordlessly, soothing the babies until their ki mellowed. As it did, some of the pain went out of Bulma’s face and she felt herself relax.

“They like you better than me already,” she pouted.

“Nonsense. Saiyans just don’t like being cooped up together for extended periods of time. They were probably fighting.”

“Vegeta, babies don’t fight.”

“Saiyan babies do.” He joked, tickling her thighs with ungloved fingers, raising gooseflesh all over her legs and arms.

“Of course they don’t!” she giggled.

“Of course they do. Saiyans are warlike beasts and you’ll be all alone amongst three of them. We’ll outnumber you.”

“Oh, but I’m sure,” she purred as he began kissing her belly, parting her legs and sweeping his hands over and over the inside of her thighs, “that my prince will defend me from such beasties.”

Vegeta chuckled, his chest rumbling as he hiked her dress a little further up her hips to expose her pert behind and tuft of unruly blue hair. Panties had gone by the wayside about 8 months into her pregnancy, and dresses were about the only thing she could wear. Her normally delicately manicured hair had grown wild, and natural, and for some reason, Vegeta preferred her that way. She was raw, and real, and she was all his.

He kissed lower on her bump, lower down to that tuft of blue, lower down still to kiss her lips and watch her squirm. “Ahn, Vegeta.” She cooed, already melting at his touch.

“Yes, Princess Bulma?”

“I love you.”

He dove into her then, parting her and lapping up her juicy sweetness as it flowed out around his gentle, skillful fingers as they curled into her and rubbed that spot she loved. With his free hand, he massaged and soothed her ever-aching back and she moaned in two kinds of pleasure underneath him. When she grasped his hair with her fingers and cried out, he increased the intensity and sent her toppling over the edge of her delight.

He looked up at her, wiping his mouth. “Come on. I ran you a bath.”

He picked her up with ease, like picking up an overstuffed pillow, and carried her to the bathing chamber. Beri had actually run the bath, sprinkling in oils and herbs to soothe Bulma’s discomfort and stress. The chamber smelled like roses and the steam was warm around her naked body. He knelt down on one knee, lowering her gently into the water. Her head lolled back and she breathed a sigh.

“Tell Beri I said thank you.”

“Tch.” So much for taking credit. “I’ll be in the kitchen. Call me when you’re ready to get out.”

“Mmhm.”  
  
“Bulma.”

“Hmm?” she mumbled, eyes closed.

“Call me when you’re ready to get out. Do not attempt to get out on your own – again.”

“I won’t.”

“Bulma…” he growled a warning.

“Really! Falling once was enough.”

Satisfied, or as satisfied as he was going to be, he shut the door behind him.

—

“VEGETA!” Bulma screamed. Something was wrong, something was wrong with the babies. The water around her was red, billowing out from a deep crimson into a pink blush at the edges of the tub. “VEGETA!” Bulma was bawling, crying, screaming as Vegeta burst through the bathing chamber door.

“Woma –“ he cut himself off as he was stunned into silence. Blood in the water, terror on her tear streaked face. In half a second, he was at the tub. “I’ll go get Beri or one of the doulas from the castle or – “ He began to pull away from her.

“Vegeta don’t leave me! What’s happening, what’s happening, what’s wrong with my babies?”  
  


He didn’t know. He couldn’t answer her. He needed to go find someone who could help, but she was digging her desperate fingers into his arm and weeping, weeping in abject and perfect terror. Blood welled up from the pricks in his arm, and welled out of her into the water.

“Little warriors, come out and see your people,” he began to sing, in his low, gravelly baritone – an accidental vibrato now, as fear stole in to his voice and it shook and broke. He could feel himself about to cry… something he had not done since he was a baby himself.

“V-vegeta,” Bulma sobbed, “that’s not going to work this time.”

He swallowed. Was he about to meet his children, or watch his wife die? “Little royals, come out and see the land.” He choked, plunging one arm into the water between her legs, as the air around them took on the softest lilac glow.

Bulma was straining against him, against the tub, pushing because instinct told her to. He could feel a little head in his hand, and he jumped into the tub fully clothed, never letting his hand stray from that soft, wet mop of hair.

“Little prince and little princess,” he sang, because he could not scream in his terror, covered now in the bloody water with his wife astride him as he faced her, hands ready to catch their little child. Their little  _living_  child, he willed, he insisted.

One last mighty push, and the babe was free in his hands and coming up through the water and breaching the water now, and squalling and crying now –  _alive, alive, alive_  his heart sang.

“Your Kingdom is at hand.”

Bulma’s head fell back, cracking against the edge of the tub. “Bulma. Bulma!” He shook her thigh, but she didn’t respond. Tucking the babe - prince or princess unknown, but live and crying with a fury – into the skin tight chest of the suit he still wore, he leaned forward and with measured strength, slapped her face. “BULMA!”

She came to, blinking, bewildered, dazed. “Is he?” and the baby answered her question with renewed volume.   
  
“Alive. Stay awake Bulma, stay awake now.” She groaned and tensed every muscle, crying again.

“Vegeta, it hurts!”

“I know, I know, I’m here.”

“The other baby’s coming,” she gritted through bared teeth. The lavender glow of the room deepened to a deep, plummy aubergine light and Bulma pushed again with all her strength. One baby still tucked up into his chest and held in place with his left arm, he had only one hand to catch the baby coming now. Bulma screamed and wept, wept and screamed.

Blood billowed out into the water, and Vegeta felt the baby’s head. “She’s here, she’s here. One more, Bulma, just one more.”

A final, almighty and exhausting effort – Bulma pulled herself up, hands digging into the backs of her knees and feet braced against the solidity of Vegeta’s abdominal muscles – a final push and the baby was born.

Bulma watched through a dreamlike haze as Vegeta’s hand pulled the baby up through the water, up through the air, in silence. She didn’t cry. Was she alive? Was she alive? “Vegeta – is she?” Bulma choked on the question, on her tears.

With a careful hand, Vegeta turned the baby to face her mother – her bright black eyes open, cheeks flushed, chest rising and falling in rapid but steady breaths. He placed the little princess on Bulma’s bare chest. Alive.

Beri burst through the door then, at last, “Prince Vegeta, the estate is glowing purple!” Her eyes widened in horror and fear as she saw the babies, saw the blood, saw the fully clothed prince awash in the tub and an exhausted Bulma weeping in pain and in joy. “I’ll get the doctors! I’ll get your mother!” She flew from the room as fast as she could.

Bulma was still bleeding into the water, and Vegeta could feel her ki fading. “Bulma.”

“Vegeta, look.” She whispered to him, “She’s perfect. She’s perfect. You were right, one girl. Is the other a boy?”

“Yes.” His voice was the raspiest husk as he reached forward to take the little princess from his wife as her hands slipped down into the water. “Yes. He’s strong.”

“He’s not crying anymore.” Her voice was fading, the thinnest rumor of a whisper now.

Vegeta tucked the little princess into his shirt, next to her brother. “Bulma, you need to stay awake. Bulma!”

“Little warriors, come out and see your people,” she whispered, arms dangling limply in the water, eyes fluttering closed. “Little royals, come out and see the land.”

Vegeta lay there in her blood, trapped by his fear and uncertainty, his children pressed against his heart. He finished the rhyme, tears running down his face. “Little prince and little princess, your Kingdom is at hand.”


	2. Birth, Part Two

**Chapter One – Birth – Part Two**

Beri wrapped the babies up once more in snug and careful bundles of the softest cloth. Twins, yes, but no such twins had ever looked so different in all her years of caring for Saiyans, royal houses and more. 

The little Prince was fey and fair – his hair was the lightest lilac, his eyes were the same soft aubergine that Beri had witnessed in Bulma’s eyes during the strange ordeal that had been the antefasting battle. He was just 18 inches long, but his body was sturdy and he weighed a respectable 7.15 pounds. A stout little boy, with a voracious appetite and a boisterous voice – crying, cooing, even once growling – with soft lilac hair falling down around his ears & eyes in velveteen swirls. Despite the delicate coloring he’d inherited from his mother, it was clear that the boy got all his temperament from Vegeta.

The little Princess was just the opposite – nearly as dark as her father, and a quiet babe. The little princess would be taller, Beri thought, as she was already an impressive 24 inches long. She weighed about the same as her brother, but didn’t look nearly as rolly poly as the boy. Her hair was most properly Saiyan – a shock of black hair, rising up from her head in a distinct, sharp point.

The little prince and princess were beautiful – healthy, calm, sleeping bundles in their little bassinette in Beri’s room. Beri called them by their titles, and Daiku called them whelp or cub or princeling or little Saiyans. They both still believed that their mother should, and  _would,_ give them their proper names… soon, surely.

Beri clenched her fists at her sides after she laid the babies down once more after their halfnight feeding. She blamed herself for the way things were – what had she been thinking, leaving the estate with Bulma so close to birth? Why had she gone out after running that bath? She should have stayed right by Bulma’s side, right by the Prince’s side.

The Prince. Poor Vegeta. When Beri had burst through the door, she had thought that another miracle, like the one at the antefasting battle, was happening and she had wanted to make sure Vegeta wasn’t missing it. Instead, she’d walked in to a scene of such horror – the bathtub a bloody pool, Vegeta’s face drawn in terror, Bulma’s fair skin an ashen grey with her ki low like the last ember of a long cold fire.

She’d just run from the house, flying from the estate and up to the castle. She’d risked immediate execution when she burst through the tall glass window of the Queen’s private chamber, sending a spray of glass shards in every direction and finding her Queen’s hand around her throat. “Your son –“ Beri had choked out, and the Queen released her. “Your son and the Princess and the babies! Please, they need doctors and –“

Queen Pea threw Beri toward the chamber door. “Then get them!” And she flew out the smashed window herself toward her son’s estate. She refused to think, to entertain the fear’s nipping at the edge of her mind, to allow herself to wonder what could have sent that dressing woman into such a panic. Queen Pea stomped down her emotions, her questions, and she put a foot straight through the roof of the bathing chamber, sending stone and eaves crumbling to bits.

Pea had been Queen of all Saiyans for thirty four years  - she had fought at her husband’s side against the Cold empire, she had lead troops in bloody, horrific battles. She had seen limbs severed, entrails spilled, Saiyan men and women that she loved torn to pieces and their bodies worn by Cold soldiers as badges of honor. Pea had seen horrors. Pea had seen blood. 

And for the first time in her reign, she was grateful for these trials, because they prevented her from collapsing to the floor in tears and grief now. Bulma was in a pool of bloody water, laying like a corpse astride Vegeta’s legs, and she  _was_  nearly dead. Her son was frozen, clutching the two babes to his chest, tears streaming down his face in rivers that Queen Pea had thought long dry. She alighted next to the tub and gave her son a hard slap across the back of his wet head.

“How long will you sit there, Vegeta?”

Vegeta turned his face up to his mother’s, eyes wide and unblinking. “Mother, I – she just screamed and I ran in – I wanted to get you, I wanted to get a doctor but she just screamed and cried and th-“

“Vegeta.”

He stopped.

“She isn’t dead yet. Will you let her die?”

Vegeta snapped out of his shock and jumped out of the tub then, scooping Bulma’s cold and naked form out along with him. Her face pressed against the babies as they began to slide out of their little nest under Vegeta’s suit.

“Vegeta, the children!”

He tossed Bulma to his mother, a morbid hot potato, as he caught the little ones before they slid out of his suit entirely. He had never felt so clumsy, so ill-equipped, so stupid. He followed his mother silently out of the bathing chamber and into the bedroom he shared with Bulma. He watched, a thousand miles away, as his mother laid Bulma’s body onto the plush mattresss, dumbly pressing his children to his chest.

“Vegeta, bring something warm and cover her body.”

He moved robotically to a pile of clothing Bulma had tossed over a couch in their room. His mother gently stepped next to him and attempted to take one of the twins, to free his arms a bit. He found himself growling, snarling at his own mother as his grip on the child intensified. His ki began to flare out around him – he was losing control.

“Vegeta, let me help you,” his mother attempted to reason with him. To calm him. He crossed his arms over the children tucked once more securely into his suit, power radiating from him in waves as he continued to snarl wildly.

Then, suddenly, he stopped and fell to his knees – eyes hollow and closing. Queen Pea dropped with him, cushioning the impact for her grandchildren and removing them from their father’s desperate grasp. She looked up and into the eyes of her King and husband, still lowering his arm from the impact his elbow had made with the base of her son’s skull.

“Take them,” she said, standing fluidly and handing both the babes to their grandfather. “Your son was on the verge of losing himself, Vegeta.”

“ _My_ son? No, that’s your son. He inherited his wild, emotional side from you.” The King bounced the little royals in his arms. “Your father’s a madman, isn’t he, little warriors?”

“Tch.” Queen Pea rolled her eyes and pulled a few articles of clothing from the couch before heading over to the bed to bundle Bulma up against her nudity and the now drafty house. She dressed the girl’s unconscious form before piling the blankets over her. “The doctor?”

“Beri is rousing every doctor, nurse, medic, doula, serving woman and mother in Asket awake as we speak. I’m sure a host is inbound now.” The answer came from Daiku, standing unexpectedly in the doorway. “I felt her fear, and found her frantic, but she explained the situation… so here I am.”

“Daiku.” The King raised a brow in greeting. “What services does an arena warrior offer the crown at their medical need?”

“Not a medical one, sire, but one of honor. I came to collect Vegeta, who will be a nuisance at best and a liability at worst, as the doctors attempt to heal his woman.”

“He’s…” the King faltered.

“…resting.” Pea finished, “and even if he were not, he wouldn’t leave with you, Champion.”

“I propose a mission to distract him, and to heal her. The doctor that your highness the Queen sent for, the one with knowledge of the Saiyan Gemini who refuses pod travel? I propose that I take Vegeta to find, collect and return with the man. He and I are strong, fast flyers and can have the doctor back here within the day. His last transmission came from the city of Caarte, which is a week’s journey by foot.” Daiku glanced at the blue haired fair form on the bed. “I do not think we have a week.”

“Astute.” The King commented.

“And, I fear, correct.” The Queen admitted. “As it is, life supporting measures will have to be undertaken, and I doubt my body can sustain them for a week.”  
  


“ _Your_ body?” The King bristled, “Absolutely not, Pea. I forbid it.”

“Oh, you do, do you? Fool.” The Queen’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing in anger. “Who else will I entrust my precious Princess-daughter to? Who else has the ki to sustain two lives? Who else has the knowledge? Shut your mouth and never again presume to forbid me anything.” The Queen spat, hackles raised and claws out. 

Daiku looked away nervously – no one liked to watch a married couple fight, but nothing could possibly be worse than watching your King and Queen in a marital spat over the dying body of your Princess as your Prince is passed out on the ground. “Shall I… take Vegeta and leave?”

The King sighed. “Yes, take him and make for Caarte. Best he should come to in the air and already on his mission.”

“And when he awakes, what should I tell him of the Princess Bulma’s condition?”

Queen Pea sat on the bed next to Bulma and took her hand. She breathed deeply, wrapping her own power in glowing bands around the sleeper’s form until she glowed faintly with the golden tint of the Queen’s ki. As power wrapped around them both, the Queen’s hair changed from raven black to finest gold, eyes changing from darkest ebony to brightest sky. There was no exertion, no uncouth exhibition of power – just her dignified sigh, her steady breathing, and a golden light that filled the room.

“Tell him,” the King began, “that his mother is using her secret power as the legendary Super Saiyan to link her ki and her lifeforce to Bulma’s – as life support until a healer can be found.”

Daiku’s eyes were wide, nearly falling out of his head in awe.

“Y-yes, my King.” Daiku bent and hauled the Prince up over one shoulder.

“And Daiku?” the Queen called, as the man made to leave the room. He paused, looking back over his shoulder at the radiant, golden Queen. “Perhaps this discovery you’ve made can be treated as need-to-know information?”

“I’ve made no discovery, my Queen.” Daiku said. “I will return with the doctor as quickly as possible.”

—

And so, when Beri returned to the estate, the King handed her the babes and bade her take them home with her to look after until their mother awakened or their father arrived home, whichever happened first. And although Daiku had arrived home with the little green doctor a week ago, Vegeta was not with him and Bulma was still not awake.


	3. Castle, Part one

_Bulma was sitting at a little white tea table in the middle of a field of flowers that stretched as far as the eye could see. The air was golden and warm around her, and she felt tired but peaceful._

_“Hello, my dear.”_

_Queen Pea, or a blonde who looked and spoke like Queen Pea, sat across from her. Her hair shone the same golden color as the late afternoon light they were bathed in, and her eyes were the color of a cloudless sky or the bright Caribbean sea back on Earth._

_“Queen Pea?”_

_“Yes, my dear.”_

_“You’re… pretty as a blonde.” Bulma said, or thought, hazily._

_“Thank you,” the Queen tittered, her bright giggle like silver droplets on crystal. “Are you feeling alright?”_

_“Tired. And I’m not sure where we are.”_

_“That’s alright, child. Just put your head down and rest. We won’t be here long.”_

~~~

Daiku felt the Prince beginning to fight off his sleep and chose to land. He’d made good time already, even with the Prince’s dead weight bearing down on his back and slowing his pace. Better the Prince should wake on the ground, where Daiku was a better fighter… just in case.

He laid the prince down on the cool ground underneath the silver light of the waning moon, and as soon as his head touched the ground, the Prince was awake.   
  


“Where the hell am I?” He snapped to a sitting position. “Where’s Bulma, where are my children?”

“My lord, we are on our way to Caarte to collect the doctor who knows about the Saiyan Gemini to bring him back to care for Bulma. Bulma is at your estate, or possibly moved to the castle by now, and she is under your mother’s care until we return. Your father the King had your children when we left.”

“How much do you know … about the birth?”

“Little, sire. Only what Beri explained to me in her rush to collect every childbirth specialist in Asket. Something went wrong and the Princess Bulma was … depleted?”

“Blood everywhere, Daiku,” Vegeta recalled in horror, “and worse than that was feeling, physically feeling the life draining out of her.”  
  
“That’s the  _Keiyaku_ , my friend. You’ve felt it long enough that you’ll now start to feel each other’s emotions, have knowledge of the other’s plans as if you’d planned something yourself. I felt Beri’s terror when she discovered your … situation, and I made for her immediately.”

“The  _Keiyaku_. Tell me Daiku… when your children were born… did you, say, lash out at anyone?”

“Sire?” Daiku was confused by that. When his children, all six of them, were born it had been a cause for elation and celebrations lasting long into the next day. He had not become violent after any of them.

“Nevermind. Nevermind.” Vegeta began to blush deeply from the shame he felt. He had frozen, unable to help his children or his woman, he had lashed out and become violent with his mother – and she, only trying to help him. If he hadn’t been stopped, would he have lost himself? Would he have killed his own mother? … how had he been stopped, anyway? A powerful headache bloomed from the base of his skull and when he touched the spot, it was tender and deeply bruised. His skull was crushed in a radiating fracture from some single point of impact.

“What… was my state, when you arrived at my home?”

“Un…conscious, my lord. Your father was there with the babes, your mother on the bed with the Princess Bulma and – “

Vegeta held up a hand. He need hear no more – manys the time Vegeta had been knocked cold by his father’s brutal elbow drop, and he now recognized the pain. “Was Bulma awake? How is she?”  
  


“My lord, she…” Daiku ran both hands through his spiky mane. How much to say? “She was sleeping, but her ki was about to fail. Your mother engaged some of her wisdom and power to tie their two lives together to keep Bulma living until we can return with the healer.”

Vegeta remembered his mother, huddled into a heap in her bed next to his brother, Tarble. Her blonde hair shining like the sun as she attempted to bind her life to his and pull him back from the brink. He remembered how she wept, the silver flow of her tears against her cool cheeks as she remained regal, otherworldly in her pain and sorrow. She stayed bound to Tarble for three days and nights, and she never found his soul – so he died and Vegeta could stand the sorrow no longer. They burned Tarble on his pyre that night, and Vegeta went out into the galaxies and into strange solar systems and away – away – away from the sorrowful glint of tears in his mother’s eyes.

Now she was trying to save Bulma the same way – would their spirits meet? Or did his infantile cowardice, his frozen reaction, his complete failure to act cost his mother another child … cost his children their own mother … cost him his wife?

Vegeta wordlessly took off into the night, flying hard toward Caarte. It should be a 20 hour flight – he would make it twelve.

—

_The flowers were from Earth, and not from Earth, and it was either never night or Bulma had slept soundly through all the hours of darkness that came here. It was a beautiful place, but so empty. She stood up from the table and stretched, wondering dimly again where she was and feeling somewhat like she had overslept for an important meeting that she couldn’t miss._

_Again, the Queen sat at the same little white tea table they’d sat at for lunch in her garden so long ago._

_“That’s right… I was in a garden… with the queen… at the castle. We had lunch.”_

_“Yes, child. Do you remember what we discussed?” The Queen was there again – though she hadn’t been before. She was blonde again, but the Queen that Bulma remembered had raven hair and inky black eyes. Maybe that day had been a dream…_

_“Did we have lunch?”_

_“Yes, child,” the Queen implored gently. Please remember, she thought. “Yes child, do you remember what we discussed? Or what we ate?”_

_“I remember… I remember you standing in the doorway of a castle after our meal, with a man. You looked beautiful, like a masterpiece wrought in stained glass.” Bulma recalled the scene dreamily, laying her head back down on the table. So hard to stay awake in this warm, relaxing place. “You said something, and I remember feeling terribly sad. Was I sad there?” she closed her eyes, drifting back into that oblivion of sleep. “I won’t… go back… to sadness.”_

Queen Pea’s head snapped up from it’s reverie. Reaching Bulma in her dreaming sleep was getting easier, but the child just couldn’t be cajoled into memory - Pea had not been able to lead Bulma to recall one tactile feeling from this world. If Pea could just get Bulma’s soul to recall the feeling of the wind, the taste of wine, the sight of the moonrise… the touch of her lover’s hand – every worldly sensation would throw out a tether for her soul, to bind it here against the sweeping tide of death that tried to take her.

All she had succeeded in doing was pushing Bulma farther to it. She’d have to try a different memory – not the warm garden in the sun again. Something with more to offer Bulma, someplace more carnal.

_Oh dear,_ the queen thought, _I suppose this will get awfully personal._

She was too tired to try again now, and she closed her eyes and leaned against one of the bedposts. They were still in Vegeta’s estate, in his bedroom. Pea had not thought it wise to move Bulma until they knew what was going on.

That fact, though, was ever harder to ascertain. None of the mothers, doulas, doctors or nurses could be admitted into the room while the queen was holding Bulma’s ki in her own. The Queen’s ascension to Super Saiyan had happened a great many years ago, during the Cold war, but still – she could count on one hand the number of people who knew about it before this crisis. Now, she added two: Daiku and Beri. Daiku had taken her son to retrieve the doctor from Caarte about 20 hours ago. Beri had been providing round the clock care to the twins, and to the Queen, and she was running interference on the birthing specialists who came to offer aide.

Beri would describe the symptoms, receive their advice, and relay it to the queen. Most of the advice was centered around old Saiyan wives tales – place a root vegetable under her head, give a tincture of this herb, pray to the moon goddess to intercede. Some of it was science based, and unfortunately all those doctors insisted on seeing Bulma in person. Queen Pea rejected every one – for issues of trust, for issues of temperament, and finally, the Queen said no more visitors.

They would wait for the doctor who knew about the Saiyan Gemini to be retrieved by Daiku and Vegeta.

—

Vegeta & Daiku hovered over the outskirts of the city of Caarte shortly after dawn, exhausted after 11 hours of hard flying at full speed. Daiku was used to an arena champion’s lifestyle - food, drink, sleep in quantities that kept him full and fresh and sated. Now, after chasing the Prince through the sky over the countryside, he wanted all three. To his everlasting credit, he was not stupid enough to suggest stopping.

“My Lord, the last communication came from the outcall center at Caarte, and the doctor should have headed west from there to keep on the road to Asket. Let’s land and ask around for his whereabouts.”

Vegeta had been silent the whole trip, awash in his thoughts and his fury at himself, scanning the ground for a little green man against the beaten red dirt of the roads below. He had not seen him yet and every mile that passed without a sighting darkened his mood. He stopped now, midair, and turned on Daiku.

“His whereabouts?! You don’t even know where he is?”

“My lord, he’s likely somewhere on the west road. He couldn’t have gotten far but may have stopped on the way to treat those in need or for shelter in the night. It is his way.”

“Then we fly over the west road until we see him! There’s no time to stop and talk to every rotten peasant along the way. He’s green,” Vegeta sneered, “He should be easy to spot.”

Vegeta didn’t wait for an answer, rocketing off into the west. Daiku did not follow. The Prince was not thinking logically, he was not behaving rationally - was it not more efficient to gather intel before heading in roughly the direction the doctor  _should_ have gone?

Daiku hesitated. What weighed more – his Prince’s rage or his Princess’s life? He vascillated in the air, torn between his allegiance to Vegeta and his certainty that he was wasting time. In the end, there was one fact – if Bulma died, Vegeta would never forgive him and he would never forgive himself. He watched the Prince’s ki trail stretching off into the distance, rending the clouds… and he decided.

Daiku’s boots touched the ground and he rapped at the door of a medical house on the outskirts of the city – Saiyans quarantined their sick to the farthest reaches of their cities on acreage compounds until they’d been cleared of contagion. Vegetasei was underpopulated after the Cold war and could ill afford an outbreak of any kind.

A female Saiyan answered the door, throwing it wide as she did. “Ill or injured?”

“Neither, healer. Looking for information.”

“The outcall center is in town, you’ll find most information there,” she said, beginning to close the door.

“Lady healer, please – I’m looking for a doctor. A small man, either young or shrunken old to your eyes, green and bald.”

The healer frowned. “…Why?”

“He is the doctor sought by the crown to treat the Princess Bulma.”

“He left here, two nights ago, heading North.”

“North?! Asket is to the west! He’s needed there urgently, the Princess is –“

“Stop!” the healer yelled, raising a hand to arrest his speech. “Stop. The crown’s illnesses aren’t public information and,” she lowered her voice, “and the Princess is already much beloved. It would cause a panic if she were in dire straits.”

Daiku clamped his mouth shut. The healer was right, of course. Every nurse, healer, doctor, doula and herbalist in the nation would abandon their medical houses or countryside charges and make for the castle at once. It would be pandemonium. Time would be wasted. Bulma may not be saved and Saiyans abandoned to their illnesses or injuries could die.

“North.” Daiku repeated. “Why north, and not west – which is the most direct route to Asket?”

“The Allewater bridge is closed, there’s no way west to Asket. He went north to Suup, and will go west from there.”

“Suup. Thank you.” Daiku nodded and turned to fly off.

“Goddess be with the Princess.” The healer closed the door behind her and Daiku flew off to the North.

He considered briefly using all his speed to catch up Vegeta and haul his ass in the correct direction, but decided against it for two reasons. One, the Prince was already in a dark mood, and telling an angry man he is wrong about something is never the best idea. Two, it would waste more time. Vegeta would see the bridge was out and come to Suup as the next most logical step.

Daiku forced his ki to flare out harder behind him, propelling him toward hope.

—

Vegeta no longer saw Daiku behind him.  _Moron had decided to stop afterall._  Vegeta glowered to himself.  _Waste of time. Insubordinate. He’ll be killed for his foolishness, as soon as Bulma awakens._ Vegeta followed the west road from above, scanning it for a green man.

Vegeta came to the Allewater bridge, and it was destroyed. No west bound traffic at all – that’s why the road was empty – you couldn’t go this way to Asket on foot. Vegeta found himself boiling, boiling with rage – more time wasted, another mistake, another wrong turn. He was furious with himself.

The image of Bulma, bleeding into the tub, eyes closed, ki spent flooded his mind. He thought of her body, going cold on top of him. He remembered being frozen, overcome by the horror of the moment. He had failed her – again. Just like in the antefasting battle, when he’d allowed her to face off against a man two feet taller than her with brutal strength above what she could ever hope to attain. His  _children,_ just babies, had saved her then. Had protected her. He failed her.

He felt himself spiraling out of control, losing touch with the moment he was in and flashing back to the moment his mother had tried to take the little princess out of his arms. He remembered the rage, the possessiveness that consumed him then, and felt his ki spike high and unholy into a darkening sky around him. Lightning flashed and the dark clouds swirled around him – he screamed, power exploding out from every cell in his body. His mind went blank and his heart thrummed.  _Failure, failure, failure, failure, failure._

In his mind’s eye, he watched his beloved Bulma take a final breath and in his fury, he couldn’t be sure if it was his imagination or a message passed through the  _Keiyaku_. Something in him stretched out – out – out and his mind was blank. He shook, he screamed, he blasted his ki through every pore in his rage and as it was finally spent, he looked down.

And noticed at last - a green man, laying in the grass next to the bridge.

Vegeta’s eyes widened – how had he missed him? He landed and demanded, “You, green man. Come with me.”

“Who the hell are you?” The green skinned alien snarled, sitting up from his nap. He was taller than he should be and he looked like a warrior, not a doctor. Vegeta had expected an old man, for some reason, and he found himself faced with a man about his age, a little taller than him. He wore a turban on his head and shoulder blade armor draped in a white cape over his loose fitting purple clothing.

“I am the Prince Vegeta and you are  _late._ The Princess could die. You need to come with me, now.” Vegeta’s lip curled in disgust. This fool has been enjoying a countryside nap in the sunlight of  _his planet_ while his Bulma wept and screamed and cried and … “Now.” He growled a warning.

“What. Are you. Talking about?”

“Now!” Vegeta shot forward, snatching the man up by his shirt. “Now!”

The green warrior, for a warrior he was, broke out of Vegeta’s grip easily. Having spent most of his strength on his tantrum in the sky, having had no sleep and no food and no drink in over 24 hours, Vegeta was far from his peak. The green man was, however, well fed and well rested and really, really not one to entertain violent fools who descended from the sky to make insane demands.

He threw a hard punch, rocking Vegeta’s jaw to one side painfully and causing the smaller man to stagger backward. “Who do you think you are?” Vegeta snarled, charging forward, fists flying.

Before either man could check their temper, the altercation turned into a full on brawl. Feet kicking, fists brutally impacting, elbows crushing, both men screaming and grunting their anger.

“Enough of this!” Vegeta wrenched both his arms back, focusing his ki into a brutal point that would flare out into an almighty blast. “GALLICK GUN!”

The blast caught the green man off guard and tore away his entire right shoulder, arm and a portion of his torso. His body staggered backward, backward, backward – over the edge of the chasm carved by  Allewater river.

Vegeta gripped his head in his hands, eyes wild.  _What have I done?_


	4. Castle, Part Two

**Chapter II - Castle, Part Two**

Daiku flew North, fast as he could, surveying below. The roads were wide and open, but thronged with traffic and traders. Most every Saiyan flew, save the children too young and traders too laden. There  _were_ people who, for whatever reason, preferred to crawl along the ground like bugs. Either the doctor was one such man or he didn’t possess the ki to fly.

Daiku trained his eyes on the ground, but inside, he was distracted and torn. Should he have gone after the Prince? Although the last year had brought enormous change to the Prince’s capricious manner, it wasn’t so long ago when Vegeta would kill a man three times before he hit the ground for the slightest of slights. His temper was legendary - quick to anger, slow to forgive, and sometimes a physical fight was the only way to exhaust the man’s rage enough to allow rational thought to seep through.

_When last had I seen my lord so dark?_ Daiku wondered to himself. After Tarble’s death, Vegeta went on a rampage, demanding to know the name of the arena fighter who had killed Tarble in battle. Naturally, he had come to Daiku for that information - but Daiku couldn’t give it. The combat had been sanctioned, honorable and fair. Tarble died a good death, despite the heartbreak it brought to his mother and the rage it stoked in his brother. Daiku didn’t want the other fighter put down like a dog in the streets.

He remembered the coldness, the midnight black rage, in Vegeta’s eyes. He remembered the venom in his voice, the brutality of his fists as violence overtook his reason. Daiku had never been beaten so badly in his life, and if it were not for the King’s intercession… Daiku would not have been surprised to die.

Indeed, he still wouldn’t be. Vegeta was just as likely to kill him for his insubordinate choice to search for the doctor on a different path as he had been to kill him for his insubordinate choice not to name his brother’s killer. Vegeta, though his heart had blossomed under the warmth of the Princess’s love, was by nature a ruthless man.

Daiku was willing to accept whatever punishment. The princess, if she could be saved, couldn’t afford to wait for her husband’s anger to burn out. Daiku would find the doctor, take him to the Princess, and worry about Vegeta after that. He hoped that would be enough.

Daiku scanned the passersby below. Mostly carts of goods, livestock, fishermen from the coastal city of Caarte heading toward parts inland to make their living. There, stopped along the side, was a throng of people crowded together. Daiku slowed, hovering a moment to see what the clot was centered around. An elderly Saiyan woman lay on the ground, blood pooling under her.

Daiku landed nearby, under the relative cover of a tree, and stood taller than most of the crowd who were bending down to help the woman anyway. Crouched beside her was a tiny being - no taller than a Saiyan of 7 or 8 cycles, and his hands were aglow, his green skin lit from within as he used his ki to heal a bloody, gaping wound in the old woman’s side. Daiku glanced around, and spotting a dead bull with blood on his horns, it was clear what had happened. The bull had broken his yoke, gored the woman. Normally, in her advanced age and with the distance to the nearest healing house, the woman would have died.

Fortunately for her, fortunately for Daiku, fortunately for the Princess - there was a doctor here on the road. As the little green one focused his ki, the woman began to breathe more easily. The flow of blood from her side eased, eased - stopped.

The doctor sat back on his heels and breathed a sigh of relief as he smiled. The old woman’s eyes fluttered and opened. She leaned her body forward and grasped the little man’s hands. “Thank you… I don’t even know your name.”

The little one smiled, “My name is Dende. I’m glad I was here to help.” He stood then, to whatever height he owned, and began to walk off.

  
“Wait!” The woman cried out. “Wouldn’t you like a little payment, or food, or drink? My cart is stuck here without the bull anyway - and you can take anything you need from it!”

Dende was unladen on the road - he carried no bags, not even a moneybelt or canteen. He certainly looked in need.

“Will you use the bull?” Dende asked the woman. “If you use all his parts, that will be enough thanks. I was sorry to see him killed.”

The woman stared at the little green healer in confusion and disbelief. Animals were killed regularly, for meat and clothing and ritual. And this one had attacked her, had been uncontrollable in a rampage! He was sorry for it?

“If that’s the payment you request in exchange for my life, we will do it.”

“Great. Thanks!” He smiled happily and began to move his little feet north again. Daiku strode forth, catching him up in seconds. Dende looked up, not the least bit afraid or perturbed. “Hello, friend. Are you in need as well?”

“Where do you travel?” Daiku asked. Obviously, this little green thing was a healer - but was he the one Daiku searched for? Perhaps his people were like Saiyans, in a way, and traveled in packs.

“I’ve been trying to get to Asket for a while now.”

“What is in Asket for you, little one?”

“Someone who needs my people’s wisdom, which has been passed down to me, and who may need my help, which I am happy to give.”

“Are you the doctor who knows of the -” Daiku bent down, lowering his voice, “Saiyan Gemini?”  
  


“Yes.” Dende said, innocently and honestly.

“The babes are born and the princess is dying. I am Daiku and I have been sent to fetch you.”

Dende’s eyes widened with fear, “Dying?!” he cried out, turning heads on the road in their direction.

“Shhhhh! Don’t start a panic. Talk more in the air - are you capable of flight?”

“Not… here, not on this planet.”

“I will carry you.” Daiku snatched a fistful of the little one’s clothing up and hauled him onto his back like a sack of grain, and without waiting for the doctor’s ascent or derision for the admittedly graceless way he was being carried, Daiku blasted off into the sky.

Miles passed rapidly below as Daiku swung west and headed directly back to Asket. It would be hours and hours flight now, but at least the doctor was found.

  
“The princess is dying - there was a great deal of blood loss during the birth and -”

“Excuse me? Daiku?” Dende called from his position, draped over the Saiyan’s back, face down into his gigantic shoulder blades with an unfortunate view of only tail, rump and land below.

“What?!”

“Would you turn me around, please? I would rather not converse with your ass for ten hours.”

Daiku rolled his eyes and rolled his shoulder, dislodging the little green one from his shoulder and sending him free falling with a scream. Daiku did a loop in the air, catching Dende once more - this time, tucked under one arm, facing forward.

  
“Better?” He smirked.

“Yes. But please don’t throw me around again.”

Daiku laughed a little at that - the little creature was very even tempered, wasn’t he? Very unsaiyan. “As I was saying, the princess experienced heavy blood loss, and was naked in water for a time after that. She lost much of her ki, much of her blood, much of her body heat. The Queen … she has stabilized the Princess, for now, but the situation is very dire.”

“I see.” The little one pinched his chin in thought. “Sounds like something ruptured and she hemorrhaged blood. Why was she left in water?” 

“The babies came, the birth was… she was alone with her husband the Prince, and he was…” Daiku hung his head and blood rushed to his cheeks in shame for the Prince. “He was overcome by the shock of it all - his woman screaming, her fear, her pain - it pushed out all his senses and he was unable to think.”

“The  _Keiyaku_ ,” said the little doctor, knowingly, “is a double edged sword.”

Daiku frowned. How did this not-a-Saiyan know about the Saiyan bond? “What are you? Your biological origin, I mean.”

“I’m Namekian. And yes - we’re all green.” Dende snorted. Possibly he had had to answer this question for other Saiyans in the past. “Your next question is: what are you doing on Vegetasei? Isn’t it?”

“It’s as good a question as any, I suppose.”

“We came here after the Cold war. Your queen relied on the Namekian people for a great many battles, because we are cheap and sturdy soldiers.” Dende noticed the raised eyebrow on Daiku’s face. “It’s true! And most of my fellows are a great deal bigger than I, strong warriors with a grudge against King Cold and his horrible son Frieza. And we don’t eat - no Saiyan level rations to buy, store and spend. We can live, and fight - or heal - strongly on any planet with a yellow sun.”

Daiku was only 39 cycles. The Cold War had ended 33 cycles ago, and he had been but a boy. Saiyans were not allowed to go to war until they reached the age of independence, so Daiku had never fought in one - the last war was over before he could fight. He didn’t know that the Saiyans had used foreign mercenaries to win.

“So what payment did your mercenary band take?” Daiku asked the boy.

“Oh we weren’t mercenaries. We didn’t like wars, and we don’t like fighting. We were refugees.”

Vegetasei did not take refugees - did it?

“Your Queen and King know much about different peoples and races. They were cunning, but also kind, I think. Frieza destroyed our planet, you see, 38 cycles ago, when your King and Queen were on our planet. I think the Colds wanted to destroy them both at any cost - and our planet was the cost. Queen Pea must be an incredible strategist… in the minutes it took for my planet’s core to destabilize, she and the King used all their speed and all their might to haul Namekians into the royal crusier. The strongest Namekians followed suit, and in minutes, they’d piled 977 Namekians into the cruiser and left the atmosphere before the planet exploded.

“977. That’s all your people?” Daiku asked.

“We  _were_  977. Your Queen and King saved us, and offered us a fair exchange. Land on Vegetasei, which is large and mostly uninhabited, for our people if we agreed to fight against the Cold army to end the war.” Dende closed his eyes. “It was kind, because we had nothing and they saved us. But it was cunning… because we had nothing and they saved us. How could we refuse?”

Daiku nodded wordlessly. The King and Queen did not have to risk their lives to save the green ones, but they did so because they knew the Namekians would have strategic worth. It was cunning dressed up in kindness.

“After the war, we were but 402. We have added many new Saiyanamekians, like myself, and now we number over 800. So we are recovering, but most are young, like myself, who are adrift between cultures. We grow here, under the sun of Vegetasei, so we are Saiyans. Yet we are different to you, true Saiyans, and cannot fit fully into your society. Also, we don’t fit fully into the ways of the Nameknamekians - they would never broadcast their healing abilities, wander out in the world looking for people to help.”

Daiku felt a little kinship with the green stranger, then. He knew what it was like to be from an underpopulated race, at least, and to be from a generation born too late for glory and so struggling to find a way to live honorably in a new paradigm. “How did you learn about the Saiyan Gemini?”

“Oh, I find Saiyans fascinating. I’ve learned books and books and books of lore and myths, about your gods and goddesses, your cities and government. I stumbled on the Saiyan Gemini myth and I was especially interested.”

“Why?”  
  


“Two babies from one birth has never happened to any Namek person, ever. It’s fascinating!”

So Daiku and Dende passed the time. Daiku telling stories of his arena battles, of the antefasting battle that had been his first loss in many years - but it was his favorite battle to describe. Dende asked and answered questions, and Daiku enjoyed talking to the little green one. Hours passed, the sun faded, and in the twilight of the dying day, Asket loomed in the distance at last. Twenty hours hard flight, 36 hours without food, drink or rest and now only the home stretch remained.

[kotonari](https://emmaekay.tumblr.com/tagged/kotonari)  


	5. Castle, Part three

This chapter is explicit! 

 

**Chapter II - Castle, part 3**

The boy stood atop the highest rampart of the tallest tower on the castle in Asket, and he looked at the land that could have been. That still could be. Vegetasei was still verdant, lush, alive. The rivers still ran clean and clear. The hills were unblasted, whole. The only thing that looked the same to him were the roads - hard beaten, red, winding, eternal.

This could have been home.

This should have been home.

The boy stood there, in the descending darkness, and he felt alone and afraid - yet hopeful and happy. If he was in time, he could go home to a home just like this one. If he was in time, he could meet his mother. If he was in time, he could go back and grow up with his sister. If he was in time, he could have his true father.

 If he was in time, the boy would have a name.

  _If_ he was in time.

 But for now, the boy stood on the battlement and wondered where to begin.

 —

Vegeta held his head in his hands.  _What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?_ Again and again, some dark part of himself admonished him over and over and over again.  _What have I done? Murderer. Coward. Dishonorable one._

_  
_“I’m not!” Vegeta spoke aloud, head still in his hands, fighting against the darkness inside himself. “I’m not - I didn’t mean - I -”

  _You killed him. Not in combat. Not in a match. In anger. Murderer._

 “He fought back - he was strong enough to defend himself - why wouldn’t he block my -”

  _You fought dirty. Coward! Just like when you froze, a helpless fool while your wife died and your children cried for her._

“BULMA’S NOT DEAD!”

_You saw her. She’s dead and you might as well have killed her. You failed her. Coward._

Vegeta screamed in his agony, still clutching his head in his hands, crumpling to his knees on the ground. Why wouldn’t this voice just shut up, why wouldn’t it just go away? Only a day ago, only a day ago, he was happy with her. He was happy with his children. He was a Prince.

_Now you’re just a madman. Murderer. Coward. Dishonorable one. Fool._

Over and through him, the darkness swelled, calling out every insecurity he had ever felt.

_Everything good dies because of you. Tarble. Bulma. Everything you love dies because of you._

Vegeta remembered the night he realized what he felt for Bulma, and the scene surrounded him. He remembered the night that his mother declared the conditions of the antefasting battle, how desperate he’d been to protect Bulma. Through memory, he lifted away from himself on the ground and saw Bulma, featherlight and aloft in the silver clouds as he held her. He remembered the silken soft crook of her neck, as he’d buried his face against her. “Do you trust me with your life?” He asked her that, and she only begged – “Don’t drop me.”

“I will never let you go.”  _You lied._

“I will never, never allow anyone to hurt you.”  _You killed her._

“Nothing will hurt you. Nothing will hurt you, so long as I live.”  _You should pay for your betrayal in blood._

“Never, never, never,” he tried to tell the memory of her, tried to block out the blackness that tainted the memory of her. “Never, never, never,” he told her, kissing her flesh over and over again as she melted away from him in the moonlight. But instead of coming back to him, as she had that night, alive and on fire with her love, she slipped away - through his fingers like mist.

And in his mind’s eye, only the shadow remained. The darkest part of himself - the one who bathed in blood on planets unknown, the one who mercilessly killed in arena matches, the one who lead his father’s armies as the general of a hundred secret missions never acknowledged by open war, the one who consumed women like water and never loved anyone but himself. The worst part of his nature took shape before his eyes.

_Murderer. Coward. Dishonorable one. Madman. Fool. Weakling._

Vegeta turned away from himself. “That’s not who I am anymore.”

The shadow swirled around him.  _Murderer. Coward. Dishonorable one. Madman. Fool. Weakling. Liar._

The darkness overtook him, filled his mind until it was the only thing that remained. His hands fell away from his face and he stood – but the man who stood was in no way the same man who had fallen to his knees in shame and grief just moments ago. Now, Vegeta stood with darkness filling his soul and ebony eyes dyed blood red.

If pain was all he had left, let it be spread.

If hate was all that remained, let it be shared

If the Princess was dead, let the Prince die, too.

No more peace. No more love. No more – for anyone.

—

Daiku’s boots hit the Prince’s estate lawn running, Dende bouncing frenetically under one arm. Daiku burst through the front door. “Beri!”

Beri’s head poked around a corner and she ran through the long dark hallway toward her husband. Dende ended up squashed between the two Saiyans in their furious embrace. 22 hours of separation wasn’t much, but the stress and indecision Daiku had been under had passed through the Keiyaku to Beri. The fear and sadness Beri had been feeling had passed through to Daiku. Both were desperate for the other’s presence and comfort – to be reunified with their mate, their battle partner, their destined one.

“Um-hellooo? Small man being suffocated.” Dende interrupted and the two came apart with a spring.

“Is this?” Beri asked her husband.

“The doctor.” Daiku nodded.

“Oh!” Beri snatched Dende’s little hands in her own. “Please, you must come now, please help her.”

“Y…es.” Dende thought about pointing out the fact that the only ones preventing him from doing so were Daiku and Beri, but thought better of it. Daiku hadn’t eaten for over a day and Dende was small – Elder only knows if Saiyans would eat Namekians, but Dende thought it best not to push it.

Beri half lead, half drug the healer down the hall and straight through the door to the bed chamber without knocking.

Queen Pea was sitting on the bed, aglow in her super Saiyan form, holding Bulma’s hand. The Queen still had the younger woman wrapped in her power, and Dende watched the Princess breath in the Queen’s same rhythm. Their lifeforces were linked, both their eyes closed. Bulma’s in the dreamless sleep of the dead – the Queen’s in the deep meditation of a spirit guide.

Dende recognized the scene – it had happened in Newnamek Village once. One of their people had been nearly killed when a house collapsed on top of him. It was only a few years after they had first gotten to Vegetasei and the dirt here made bad bricks when compared to their homes back on Namek. The poor man was crushed. Immediately, one of the Elders let all his ki flow at once into the dying man, while another man entered a meditative state and connected his ki with them both.

The first man kept the crushed one alive, and the second man went into the spirit world to shepherd his soul back into his body.

The man survived.

Dende pushed up his sleeves and headed toward the bed. He peeled back the blankets from Bulma, as Daiku and Beri stood in the doorway. Having assisted in quite a few complicated Saiyan births, Dende was no stranger to the parts involved – but there was always a husband or mate nearby, usually ready to rip Dende’s throat out for looking at his woman’s … parts.

Namekian births were just so much cleaner. Safer. Better in general, Dende thought. No one died in Namekian birth – just an egg and a hatching and a little water and sunlight: instant Namekian. Saiyan births were… honestly, Dende thought they were gross. All blood and goop and afterbirth and screaming and milk and ugh.

As Dende lifted the fabric of Bulma’s wrappings, Daiku and Beri both stepped forward a few feet into the room. “Here now!” “What are you looking –“

Dende turned around and shot them both a sardonic glance. “Namekians are sexless. I can’t fix her if I can’t see her injuries.”

Daiku glowered on the spot, but Beri was unconvinced. “Do you need… assistance?”  _I’m watching you, green bean._

Dende chuckled. “Yes, thank you. You’ll have to hold her legs.”

Beri regretted the offer, but there was nothing to be done now. She would have to safeguard her lady’s honor – up close and personal. Beri was taller than Dende anyway, so when he sat down on a stool at the edge of the bed, she loomed over top of him, one hand on each of Bulma’s knees as her peered in to look for an obvious wound.

“She’s still bleeding, so that will have to stop first. The placentas are still attached and her womb is ruptured. I can fix her womb, but the placenta has to come out first.”

Dende stood up, momentarily eliciting a growl from Daiku as Beri’s ample breasts topped his head and slid off.

“Daiku,” Dende admonished lightheartedly. “Sexless.” He pointed to himself.

Daiku rolled his eyes and clicked his teeth as Dende moved to the head of the bed. His hands glowed white and he stared down as he examined Bulma’s skull. “She had an aneurysm as well. That has to be healed first.” The glow of his hands changed, white light to softest gold. Dende’s eyes were closed now, and his breathing synced up with Bulma’s and the Queen’s. He hummed softly, a soothing tune, and swayed almost imperceptibly from side to side.

Beri and Daiku could only watch, as moments stretched into minutes that stretched on into an hour. Dende stood, swaying and humming and glowing – then stopped and fell straight to the floor.

Daiku rushed forward and hauled Dende up. “You alright?”

“She’s not Saiyan.” Dende blinked. “Close, but not Saiyan.”

“No. She’s not. She’s an Earthling,” Beri said, next to her husband in a flash. “Is that a problem, can you not heal her?”

“Oh, no, I fixed her brain. It was just… very different to a Saiyan brain. How long did it take me?”

“About an hour, I think,” Daiku told him.

“An hour! I’ve fixed worse injuries on a Saiyan in five minutes. No wonder I fell.”

“Do you need anything?” Beri asked, anxiously – the last thing she needed was another unconscious charge. “Some food?”

Daiku’s eyes lit up at the mention of food. He was starving. Dende, true to his story of his people’s ability to go without, requested only a large vessel of water, which Beri retrieved immediately. Dende drained the vessel completely, drinking it all down in one long gulp. “Can you fill this again?” he asked Beri, handing the vessel back to her.

When she returned with the vessel, Dende focused his ki over top of it, hands glowing that same golden light. The water changed from clear to a shimmering milky white. He handed the vessel back to Beri. “Take this vessel and pour the entire contents, little by little, into Bulma’s mouth. Make sure she swallows it. Tip up her head a little so she doesn’t drown.”

Beri’s hands shook as she took the Princess’s head in one hand and held the vessel in the other.  _Drown? I’m not a healing woman, I’m a house keeper and a dressing woman!_ Daiku crossed the room and took the vessel from his woman’s hands. “Hold her head. I will give her the drink.”

Beri tipped Bulma’s chin down and her mouth opened. “Yes, that’s about right,” Daiku assured her.

“Given a lot of unconscious people drink, Daiku?” Dende asked from the foot of the bed.

“I’m an arena fighter. People get knocked out all the time.”

“Don’t you have healing staff to do the healing?”

“I’m a nice guy.” He began tipping the drink into Bulma’s mouth. Bit by bit, Bulma swallowed down the drink, as Beri kept her head positioned just-so and Daiku poured in tiny measures. She never sputtered and after watching for just a little while, Dende was satisfied with their assistance and turned his attention to the Queen.

She was, to an outside view, just sitting with her eyes closed, breathing deeply and seeming peacefully. To Dende’s eyes, she was a storm of ki, a rapid flowing white water river in an endless loop through Bulma’s body and her own. The flow was still strong – it was actually incredible. In Namekians, it usually took two or three to do what the Queen was accomplishing on her own; one to heal the body, one to support the lifeforce, and one other to go into the spirt world to retrieve the injured person’s soul before it became completely disconnected from the body.

Dende wondered how long she’d been at it, and whether she’d been able to contact Bulma’s spirit yet.

—

_Bulma was laying on her bed, in their bedroom. Silver moonlight poured through the windows and she could hear the shower running in the other room._

_“Vegeta?” she called out, but there was no response from the bathing chamber._

_Bulma rolled over and stood up in the bed. There was wine and cheese on the bedside table, her clothes all over the floor, Vegeta’s suit thrown over a chair._

_Are those my clothes?_

_Is this my bedroom?_

_Bulma wandered over to the bedside table and picked up a wineglass as a cloud slid away from the moon and the silvery light intensified. Bulma looked up at the moon in a haze._

_What night is this?_

_At the edge of Bulma’s mind, she remembered that moon. Remembered that sky. Remembered this wine. She took a sip and her mouth was flooded with the juicy, jammy oak and cherry taste, smoke on the finish that lingered like Vegeta’s kisses down her neck._

_“I know what night this is,” she said aloud. She recognized the white gossamer dress on the floor now – her tea dress. The antefasting battle had been announced and Vegeta had flown her high up into the clouds, away from the castle and away from the truth that couldn’t be unuttered. He’d whispered love into her neck, kissed it into her chest, slid it into her with his hands and his manhood. She remembered how the clouds swirled around them, how she felt as she flew with him._

_She remembered feeling fear – of tomorrow, of the battle, of this ferocious and undeniable love – and she remembered feeling free and as happy as she had ever been._

_After he made love to her under the silver moon, they’d come home to find the King’s proclamation on their door, and he’d ripped it into bits before picking her up and carrying her to their bed. She remembered how his eyes looked – soft and sweet and longing. “I’ll be right back,” he promised, setting her down gently on the bed._

_He left the room and came back with a tray in his hands and a bottle of wine. “Beri left this out for us, I thought you might want dinn-“_

_Bulma had shed her dress and stood naked under the open window, facing him. Alabaster skin shining as the moonlight flowed around her every curve and through the tiny opening between her thighs. She looked like Elatha herself had descended from her kingdom on the moon to choose a lover from mere mortals. Vegeta felt unworthy to stand before her, so he crossed the room and got down on his knees, kissing her belly and sliding his hands up her legs, up her thighs, around the sweet swell of her soft hips._

_Bulma ran her hands through his hair as he bent his head lower and lifted one of her legs up over his shoulder. She leaned back on the windowsill, standing on one leg and supporting herself on her arms on the window’s little ledge. He buried his face in her, nuzzling her most sensitive spots, diving into her with his tongue and running his fingertips over and in and around her wetness. She shook and quivered under his insistent but tender ministration, soon tightening her grip in his hair and throwing back her head, crying out in ecstacy as her standing leg gave out._

_Vegeta caught her in his strong arms and laid her down before him on the floor underneath the window, where the moonlight lit her brilliant eyes and crystalline hair, before covering her up with his own body, consuming her entirely in a kiss and in his love._

_—_

“Oh my.” Queen Pea snapped awake, muttering. “Oh dear. Oh my.” She was blushing hard and tried to hide her embarrassment from the rest of the room by covering her face with her hands. Daiku and Beri were on the bed, a little green man near its foot.

_Wait a minute! Little green man!_

“Are you the doctor?” Queen Pea cried out.

“Oh! You’re awake! Hello! Yes, I’m Dende.” The little green fellow smiled at the Queen. “Are you alright? You’re terribly flushed.”

“Ha ha,” the Queen laughed drily, “Yes I’m fine. The minds of the young are an… intense place. Who knew that the last time Bulma had had wine would have turned into that!”

“Into what?” Dende asked innocently.

“Nevermind that,” Daiku interrupted. “The Princess has consumed the drink, Dende.”

“Oh good. It should start to work very soon.” Dende turned again to the Queen. “Were you able to find her soul?” The Queen’s eyes widened and she raised a brow, regal but quizzical. “I know what you’re doing, of course.” Dende confirmed. “It’s a Namekian technique.”

The Queen’s face remained composed, a mask of indifference even though she felt caught out. Yes, it was a technique she’d learned from a few Namekian soldiers on a battlefield, long ago. But did he have to say it?  _Leave a Queen some mystery, thank you._ “Yes, I have had contact with her soul several times, and the first physical tether was made just now.”

“Good! I have healed her brain injury and I will be removing the inflammation in her womb now before healing that area and the internal bleeding. She should be able to return to her body soon.”

Dende returned to the foot of the bed and to his work of making the Princess well again.

 

—

The boy decided to begin with his father’s likely first target: the King. He was already at the castle and the King should be within it. He was also likely to be the most difficult to convince of the reality of their situation.  _Might as well work from the top down!_ The boy thought to himself, jumping from the rampart down to the castle door.

“Stop, Stranger.” The guard at the castle door halted him almost immediately. “What is your business with the crown in this late hour?”

“I seek an audience with the King. I am an emissary from a foreign government with information crucial to the King.”  _Well, kind of._

“What information?” the guard grilled.

“Information for the king, not for the doorboy.” The boy stood a little taller and looked down his nose at the guard.

“Very well. I will escort you inside. If the King has retired for the evening, you will leave the grounds and return in the morning, unless Saiyan blood will be spilt between now and then if this information is not received.”

“It is possible. I really need to speak with the King.”

“Come.”

The boy followed the guard past the wrought iron gate and into the inner courtyard of the castle.


	6. Arrival

AN: Guys, this chapter contains graphic descriptions of violence against a child.

—–

 

 

Vegeta stood at the edge of the chasm, looking down. Nothing into nothing into nothing – just the way it should be – fell down into the flood of Allewater river below, whose white waters raged soundlessly far down the walls of the canyon.  _This is the world’s natural order – freefall, chaos, strong forces eroding away the weakness that surrounds them until the path is clear._

A dark impostor of himself, Vegeta contemplated the rapids below. The whites of his eyes flooded with shadow, the irises a bloody red, inky shadows dancing along his skin – the darkness in his nature made solid, taken form – taken his form – while whatever the Prince had been was buried underneath.  _Power, absolute power, is what makes a man secure from pain like the Prince had been feeling over these last torturous hours. Power, absolute power – no matter what darkness came as the price._

So this was the Prince without his Princess. Ruthless, violent, a world-ender. This was a Vegeta few on this planet had seen, even as they suspected some kind of madness below the surface as they watched him brawl, as they sparred with him on the training grounds. Those were samples, tastes, hints at the depravity of which he was capable. Few saw it… none lived.

Vegeta was, commonly and lovingly, referred to as the Puckish Prince in the kingdom. He did what he wanted, he went where he wanted, he took no audiences and seemed to fulfill none of his royal duties. What none but the King and a handful of soldiers knew – what everyone would discover soon – is that Vegeta had long been their shield. He travelled galaxies “adventuring” and “arena fighting” and he did both of those things, it’s true. But his travel had more sinister purposes, always – his father’s general, his people’s assassin.

_How do these fools think peace has lasted all these years since the end of the Cold war? Do they think the galaxies just forgot about the Saiyans? Do they think that none ever dared threaten us again, simply because we barely managed to destroy one yoke around our necks? Complacent morons._

The reality was that the Saiyan army had gone covert in these years. No full scale wars, but laser precision missions to destabilize entire worlds – political assassinations, army decimations, threats and coercion. Kidnappings, beheading. Vegeta had once mailed a King his own wife, in 40 boxes over four years, head last; mouth frozen forever in a scream of terror that had never left that King’s mind. Carved into her forehead was the sigil of another major power on that world. They fought for decades and forgot the Saiyans entirely.

This was the reality of Vegeta’s life – a black spire with a bloody flag to warn every living man, woman and child that the Saiyan people would never again go to war… they would murder you in your sleep instead.

Puckish Prince no longer – the man who stood now at the edge of the chasm would be a Dark King, and tonight was the night he would ascend his throne.

—

The King wore an off white tunic and a scowl, no more, as he sat on his throne and glowered down at the boy who came at midnight speaking of bloodshed and mayhem – speaking or threatening, the King would soon decipher. The Boy stood at attention like a soldier with Saiyan training, one arm bent at the elbow behind his back, hand in a tight fist, the other arm crossed at an angle with his other fist over his heart. A sign most respectful, but The Boy could not be a Saiyan. His hair was shoulder length, long and tied loosely off his face, but water smooth and fine – not the shocks of coarse hair poking out at every angle that betrayed a Saiyan as one of his race faster than nearly anything else. More troubling was the color of his features, hair and eyes both the softest lilac.

The King glared down at The Boy, feeling something both wrong and familiar in his features. “Speak,” he growled.

“King Vegeta,” The Boy began, feeling too much like a bug pinned to paper under the King’s mighty gaze. It was likely that he could be killed for what he was about to say. “I have come to warn you that I believe there will be an attempt on your life.” The King cocked an eyebrow high into the peak of his hairline. “And,” The Boy swallowed hard, “I have reason to believe that you will lose.”

The King stood up at this, tunic flapping up and exposing huge tree trunks for legs. He stomped down the steps from the dais until he was directly in The Boy’s space, barely a hair’s breadth separating them, his rippling chest right up against The Boy’s nose – the King towered over him by a foot and better. “You are… either very brave or very stupid. I am tired, so I find myself unable to decide which it is.”

The Boy hit the ground, knees bent, one hand stretched above his head with his hand in a fist – the Saiyan combat signal of supplication. The Boy dare not look up – both because it would be disrespectful and because the King had on no pants.

“Grandfather, please listen to me. I didn’t come to provoke you.”

“Grandfather?! My son’s pups are two day old, you are no grandchild to me.” The King stepped back a foot, only a foot, still looming, still imposing upon this stranger who spoke strange things. “Who are you? What is your name?”

“I don’t have a name. The Saiyan tradition is that a mother should name her children, and as my mother passed three days after I was born, I was never given a name.”

“Who is your father and why do you obey Saiyan tradition? Surely your father could’ve given you a name.”

“We obey Saiyan tradition because I am Saiyan. I am a halfsaiyan.”

“Halfsaiyan?! Where were you born?!” The King’s voice raised as his confusion did. There were two halfsaiyans on this entire planet and they were barely out of their mother’s womb.

“Here, my King, or very near it. I have heard that I was born in the Prince’s bathtub.” Here now, The Boy stole a glance upward into the King’s face. “I am the Prince Vegeta’s son.”

The King sat down where he was – on the floor of the throne room, the boy still on one knee, fist raised in salute. In the Saiyan tradition, he would stay in that pose until the King acknowledged him. He looked at The Boy and nodded once, and the tension snapped out of the younger man, like a belt removed from the coils of a hard running engine.

“How do you know where the little Prince was born?”

“I am the little Prince, my King. I had a sister, who would strike you as more properly Saiyan, if she were here. Her hair was so dark a shade that it passed for black in all but midday sun, and her eyes were black like our father’s. Someone told me once that I favor my mother.” The Boy half-smiled. “I am the Prince Vegeta’s son, the same little Prince that was born perhaps two days ago – if I have my timing right.”

The King’s face screwed up into a tight mask of indifference, although his mind was racing. “What is your mother’s name?”

“Bulma Briefs.” 

_Common knowledge,_ the King thought.  _Something harder._ “How did she get to Vegetasei?”

“She wished for it.” 

_No one outside the royal family, save Daiku and Beri, knows that._ “Is your father as tall as I?”

The Boy smiled fully this time. “No, sire, he never grew to your height. He also favors his mother, as I favor mine.”

“How can this be?” The King ran both hands over his face and through his hair. “And me in my nightrobe.” 

“The world has gone wrong.” The Boy insisted, a hard edge coming into his voice. “Something happened here that wasn’t supposed to happen – or something will happen here that isn’t supposed to happen – something so foundationally wrong that it created rifts, holes like windows… through time. I am 18 cycles yesterday and I have lived through the worst kind of hell I can imagine. The extinction of the Saiyan race.”

The King blanched white, fists balled and knuckles showing.  _Time rifts? Saiyans extinct?_

“Very soon, your son will be overtaken by a dark force and… he will kill you. And he will kill your guard, and all the forces of this castle. My grandmother the Queen will feel you dying and she will leave my mother to try to come save you. She will be overcome by rage and… she will fight my father brutally. She will die in that fight, unable or unwilling to kill her last remaining son.”

The King shook in rage. His wife, his own sweet Pea, killed by their own son. Foundationally wrong, indeed. He bit his tongue, drawing blood in his effort to hold himself calm and quiet while The Boy finished this horrible fantasy.

“Vegeta crowned himself Dark King Vegeta and waged open war on his own people. Some soldiers stayed with him because he promised them glory and riches from worlds away – he wants the Saiyans to be conquerors, destroyers as they were under Frieza, but says that his own people must fall in line first. The Namekians in their southern village were the first to die, and that angered many – they were peaceful people but helpful allies and some of our best healers. Civil war broke out, then. Vegetasei is now a ruined thing, blasted and empty, and has been for a long time. After just ten years war. After ten years of civil war, Saiyans killing Saiyans, Vegeta’s own soldiers finally turned against him… so he hired offworlders to fight them.”

The Boy grit his teeth, trembling now and beginning to cry, face burning with shame. “It was then that my sister died. We were just t- ten cycles and she…” The Boy swallowed hard. “She fought my father, she had a righteous heart, she only wanted to make him see that light and love could still exist.” Anguish filled his features and The Boy balled his fists up in his own shirt hem, wringing and wringing it as he spoke. “She tried to make him see that the Saiyans were then so few… and he killed her outright, one blow through her chest. He smiled, her blood on his armor, her heart in his hands as he shoved it in my face.”

Tears rolled down the boy’s face as he recalled the memory, distance stealing into his voice as he spoke the flashback he saw. “He roared, he kicked her corpse to me, and her face…Her face. Her face.” The Boy shook and shook, a new leaf on a sapling in a firestorm of terror. “I clutched her to me, I thought -” The Boy sobbed, brokenly, “He ground my face into her blood and I watched her choke out a last breath. Brother, she called for me. Brother. Brother.“ The Boy choked now, and sobbed into his hands, venom and horror and bile and tears driving him into the ground. “I couldn’t get free of him, I couldn’t stand, she just wat- watched me as I wa-wa-watched her die,” he wept, the last word stretching out into such a cry of pain, the King had never heard such suffering uttered.

The King placed one huge hand on The Boy’s head and let him cry. Who knows how long it had been since this nameless child, barely of the age of independence, had been safe enough to cry? He was just a child – this is why the King had forbidden war service until the age of independence, and even then they had five or more years of training before they saw combat. They were just children, they needed their people’s protection, their fathers’ protection.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” The Boy sobbed again and again. “I watched, I watched and did nothing, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

The King waited for The Boy’s sobs to ebb, as all tears have some end, but it was long until the boy tried to speak again. They sat on the floor of the throne room, The Boy purging 18 years of the deepest sadness with the King’s heavy, kind hand on his head - the first tender touch he’d known in too long.  “I’m sorry, King Vegeta, I’m sorry,” he said through tears. “I’m ashamed.”

“The shame is mine.” The King spoke quietly, booming voice dulled down to the most threadbare whisper. “I’m ashamed that such darkness could grow in my own son.”  _How could he do it, his own daughter, his own precious child?_

“My sister’s body was displayed on the castle’s front door, as a warning to others and most of all, a warning to me. No pyre. Her body was picked clean by birds and beasts.” He took a shuddering breath. “Her bon- her bo-“ Another sob clawed out of his chest, “ _Her bones hang there still,_ ” he managed to shriek at last, his pain a live thing with fangs in his throat.

The King stood. If the child could not kill the beast of his sorrow alone, let him be helped. He put his hands under The Boy’s arms like he would a child of three and hauled him to his feet. “Will Vegeta come tonight?”

“I don’t know,” The Boy choked, still awash in tears. “I came back to stop it, I came back to warn you, I went through so many rifts to find the right time, I’ve been wandering and wandering, I don’t know what day it is now and I don’t know what day he attacked you to begin with and I –“

“Stop.” The King placed both hands on The Boy’s shoulders. “Stop. I am warned, you have done that much.”

The Boy scrubbed at his eyes, angry with the flood pouring out of them, but the King smiled warmly. “Let’s go see your mother, grandson. You’re in time for that, too. And your Grandmother Queen is here and she is far wiser than I. Here, now, Saiyans are many, and cunning, and you are not alone.”

—

At the bottom of the canyon carved by Allewater river, a lone warrior stood, soaked to the bone, irate… and alive. Fortunately for the warrior, full grown Namekians possessed the ability to regenerate almost any limb – or selection of limbs – as long as their head was undamaged.

It had been the Prince that attacked him… it had been, and it had not been. As Piccolo fought the man, he saw the darkness beginning to lick at Vegeta like a flame to paper. He saw his eyes flash black and bloody red, and when the energy beam had been fired at Piccolo, he saw his opportunity to feign death and let himself stumble backward and off the cliff into the Allewater river.

When the Namekians had resettled on this strange planet, the first step of the elders had been to choose a sacred river to supply them with the water that would nourish them in their new home. Allewater stretched far north and deep into the south lands that they’d been given, so it had been the natural choice to receive their blessing. Now, Allewater River was sacred to the Namekians, infused with the power of their people from its origin to its terminus and as such, would never injure them.

Piccolo had hit the water hard, but it had also healed him.

Now, he wanted to go immediately to the castle, to demand redress from the crown, possibly to inform them that their son had some dark sickness and was finally completely insane. However, one lone Namekian was unlikely to be listened to, so he would go home first to talk with the other elders of his own people. If the Prince had gone mad, if some kind of trouble was coming, it would come to the Namekian village first – Piccolo had no illusions about that. They were still an isolated, small people on a planet full of warriors… very few of whom knew about the Namekian’s alliance during the war, or indeed even their existence on the planet. With the exception of some young Namekians, who called themselves Saiyanamekians, most of their people stayed in their own village and kept to their own affairs.

_That Dende! Where the hell is he?_ Piccolo had been Dende’s escort – more like bodyguard – as he traveled the Saiyan cities and they’d become separated in Caarte, but had agreed to meet up at the Allewater bridge if that happened. Piccolo was a tactician at heart and he’d drilled contingency plans into the little Namekian’s head again and again in every city. Dende was prone to wandering, helping whoever he could and getting his nose stuck in books of medicine or lore, so they always had a meeting point designated for each leg of their journey. 

Dende was of age and he was small, peaceful, helpful. He would have to fend for himself now, and Piccolo trusted that Dende’s own inherent goodness would keep trouble at bay until he could find and collect him personally. For now, Piccolo pulled a huge leaf off a nearby Tembo tree and sat it upon the water before sitting on the leaf himself. He would sail the river home and take council with his people – he could taste darkness in the air, sense a war looming on the horizon like stormclouds.

 

—

_The day had been full of celebration - it was Vegeta’s 30th birthday and the entire Kingdom was in a state of absolute rapture. The morning began with honor matches, Vegeta competing personally in several, had feasting throughout and Bulma found herself having the most fun she’d ever had._

_Giant beasts called Tyr, winged like birds but cat-formed like giant tigers, saddled and ridden through the sky like carnival rides. Dancers and magicians. And best of all, beer that wouldn’t hurt the babies! Bulma was heavily pregnant and had stared at the mugs thirstily._

_“Princess Bulma, should I fetch you one?” Beri had asked, the bright ribbons in her hair dancing as she called down from her perch on Daiku’s massive shoulder._

_“Beer is bad for the babies, Beri.”_

_“What?!” Nappa had yelled drunkenly next to her. “You’re nuts. Wine and spirits are to be avoided, certainly, but beer is good for a growing babe - and for the mother!” He ribbed her goodnaturedly. “Drink two at once - one for each of them!”_

_Daiku reached over to the serving woman’s tray and pulled four tankards from it with one hand, a finger in each. It was a long time since Bulma had been grossed out by the way Saiyans handled food and drink - bare handed, poking into everything. Hadn’t killed her yet!_

_He shoved his hand toward Bulma. “Take two! Drink! Celebrate! Our Prince is today a man!”_

_“Fool,” Vegeta spoke from above their heads, but with a smile. “I was a man before you were born.” He landed and took a cup from Daiku, draining it at once and beckoning the serving woman to bring more._

_“How so, my lord? And you, younger than I!”_  
  
“Exactly. Poor Beri is still waiting the day you reach manhood.” The Prince jibed him, drawing a collective ‘ohhhh’ from the listeners. 

_“Since’s it’s your birthday, my lord, I will refrain from killing you in front of your woman.” Daiku laughed and soon infected the group with his delirium. “Drink, Bulma! I won’t have my students born weak!”_  
  
Bulma took the tankyards. “You’re POSITIVE it won’t hurt the babies.” She glanced at Vegeta, who shrugged and pointed yards behind him at the castle. “My mother drank a barrel a day when she was pregnant with me.”

_Bulma lifted the vessel to her mouth and tasted the brew - heady and hoppy, sweet and just a little earthy… oh it was delicious! She drained it, and the second, in thirsty seconds._

_Nappa clapped her on the back and she burped an incredible, loud sound. Nappa lost it then, doubling over in his laughter, “Vegeta are you absolutely certain she isn’t a Saiyan?”_

_Vegeta threw his head back and laughed, slipping his arm around Bulma’s waist. “No, this one is no Saiyan.” He reached up and stroked a lock of her silky blue hair. “Have you ever seen a Saiyan quite this beautiful?”_

_Daiku pretended to clear his throat exaggeratedly, “Surely my Beri!” He rolled Beri off his shoulder and swung her down into a dip, kissing her as he did. Beri laughed, “No, husband, Bulma is the winner of that contest.”_

_“Never in my eyes, wife,” he said as she popped back up to ride his shoulder once more._  
  
“Well, if it’s a contest of wifely comeliness,” Nappa said, “It must be Choy!” Nappa’s own wife was landing a Tyr then, little children fleeing from the beast as it roared playfully after them as they clambered down its back. She handed the reigns to another woman standing there and made for her husband.

_Choy’s hair was shorn short and she was tall and thickly muscled - she looked like a female Nappa, but was blessedly unmustached. “Prince, lady Princess. Happiest of birthdays, sire.” Nappa offered her a mug of spirits, his own preferred drink. “Fool!” she slapped the back of his head. “Have you forgotten I’m with child?”  
_  
 _“Nappa’s going to be a father?” Bulma spoke, looking around at Daiku, Beri and Vegeta, who’s jaws were somewhere along the ground. “When?”_  
  
Nappa shot his woman a look, “We were going to announce tomorrow, it’s very early yet.” 

_“Congratulations!” Bulma cried and took the other woman’s hands.  
  
“Ahh, thank you lady Princess. If it is a girl child, may I call her Bulma?”  
  
Bulma gasped, “Of course! I’m so honored!”  
  
Vegeta called to the servingwoman, “Here! More beer, more meat, more cakes! Two pregnant women outnumber any sum of Saiyan men.” he laughed.   
  
They stayed among their friends for many hours, laughing, talking, supposing what Nappa’s baby might look like when it’s born. At dusk, when all the men were well drunk, Bulma disappeared from the fray and went behind the castle.   
  
 Queen Pea waited there, bundles in her arms. “Are you sure about this?” she said, conspiratorially. “What if the men think it’s an attack?”  
_  
 _“Wouldn’t that be funny!” Bulma laughed with the Queen.  
  
“Yes, until they destroyed my castle in their drunkenness! I like my castle, daughter.” she said, serious in tone but with laughter in her eyes.   
  
“We do this all the time on my planet! Don’t worry.” Bulma took the bundles from the Queen, who scooped Bulma up into her arms to carry her through the air. “I’m not too heavy now, am I?”   
  
“Child, you couldn’t carry enough babies or eat enough feasts to be heavier than I can can carry.” Pea tittered, landing at the top of the castle battlements. _  
 __  
Bulma handed the packages to the Saiyan guard she had bullied once upon a time, when she was testing her if-I-yell, will-they-listen theory. His name was Cress. “Lady Princess, your highness.” He smiled at them, and began hooking charges and fuses to the bundles before dropping them into tubes. “Back to safety with you now.”

_The Queen landed Bulma back on the ground and she went to collect the King amongst the throng of party goers that thickly littered both the castle and estate grounds. “We’ll be by the beer tent, over by the Tyr flights, on the estate,” Bulma told the Queen before heading off._  
  
She returned to Vegeta’s side, slipping her arms around his waist from behind. “Here now,” he said, “I am a married Saiyan man, strange woman.” He was drunk, very drunk now, “And my woman is the most beautiful c-creature in all the galaxies of this universe.” Bulma giggled. “Unhhhand me.”

_“Is she so beautiful, still, big as a house and swollen with pregnancy?” she laughed, warm breath on his ear.  
  
He turned in her grasp to face her, nose brushing up against her nose, his_  _breath sweet with wine. “Oh, beyond. Beyond beauty, she is the moon goddess Elatha, descended from her silver kingdom to torture men’s hearts.” He kissed her softly, sweetly, with such heartrending tenderness, winding his ungloved fingers through her hair. “She is the sun Queen Fieyra, the light of day itself.”_  
  
“Vegeta,” Bulma said, “Look behind you.”   
  
“Why?” he murmured, nuzzling her neck, just below her ear, almost purring in his drunken bliss, “Nothing could ever be as interesting as this -” he licked at the little baby hairs at her hairline “little ear lobe.”   


_Bulma giggled like a child, “Vegeta, you’ll miss my surprise.”_  
  
An explosion in the distance snapped him out of his reverie and he spun around, throwing his arms out to shield her from the blast. “BULMA RUN!” But the sound was followed by a beautiful golden shower of light through the darkened sky. Another and another - gold and green and red and blue, blossoming like flowers of fire or stars fallen from the heavens.   
  
She smiled and took his hand as he stood, drunk and dumbfounded. “I made them, they’re called fireworks!” Vegeta’s eyes popped out of his head as he stared at her. “We do them all the time on Earth.”  
  
Vegeta looked around at his people in the courtyard, in various stages of shock, wonder, surprise and not a few in battle stances. He laughed loudly as Nappa and Daiku ran toward them at full steam. Poor Beri bounced painfully on Daiku’s shoulder, he had her absolutely pinned to the spot with one arm. Bulma laughed, then, too.   
  
“Princess, you should go inside at once!”  
  
“It’s fine,” Vegeta started to explain.  
  
“But Vegeta!” Nappa exclaimed, “We’re under attack!”  
  
“Only by this little prankster,” he scooped Bulma into his arms and she threw hers around his neck, nestling in to the best seat in the house. “Elatha? Fieyra? No, she is Eshu, trickster goddess of the night.”  
  
They watched the fireworks light up the night… and the second tether on Bulma’s soul was made.


	7. Future

**Kotonari IV – Future**

The Boy walked next to the King, who was still in just his nightrobe, as they walked through the castle. This place, too, was different in his time. The thrones on the dais were the first difference The Boy had noticed – this King Vegeta’s throne was black marble, 90 degree angles, sharp and uncomfortable looking. You looked at the King, you looked at the throne, and you realized that you needed to speak quickly, clearly, concisely for it was apparent that the King didn’t intend to spend all that much time on his throne.

The gilded, plush, jewel inlaid throne next to it, The Boy assumed it belonged to his grandmother Queen, gave you just the opposite problem. You looked upon that throne and realized that the comfortable Queen would take all day, had all the time in the world, to patiently wait for you to run out of words, out of excuses, out of your mind before she passed judgement upon whatever issue you’d brought to her.

The two thrones were entirely missing from The Boy’s world. His father took no audiences, and so had no need of a place to sit and make proclamations. The dais was still there, and on the rare occasions that he addressed his soldiers or his son, he stood upon it and screamed down. The room itself was bare of everything in that future, totally bereft of the painted royals whose portraits hung on the walls now. Dark King Vegeta took no guidance from his ancestors, nor indeed from anyone at all.

The King raised a hand in greeting to the same guard who had admitted The Boy. “Cress. You wisely admitted this child. A threat against the crown is made. Send word for the entire Crown’s Battalion to awaken, make ready for a highly dangerous opponent to attack the castle. One third of the battalion should go directly to the Prince’s estate and guard the Queen and Princess who are currently sequestered there.” 

Cress stood immediately to attention. “At once, sire!”

“And wake Nappa up. Send him to the estate. I need his counsel.”

“N…appa’s, sire?” Cress paused a moment. Nobody had ever – ever – wanted Nappa’s counsel in Cress and Nappa’s entire life. They were cousins, playmates, sparring partners and friends… but he wouldn’t ask Nappa for counsel on anything other than spirits, and even that advice could be taken as dubious. The only other royal to ever send for Nappa directly was Vegeta, who liked the old fool for reasons that weren’t ever apparent. They had gone off world together many times, Nappa and the Prince. Perhaps that was connected to this, Cress thought.

“Did I misspeak, soldier? Nappa. Now. Crown’s Battalion, also now. Move!” King Vegeta ordered the younger Saiyan, who immediately saluted before running down the hall at the highest speed he was capable of, past the paintings, the plush couches, over the thick ruby red carpets, down the hall and around the corner and out of The Boy’s sight.

In the future, the castle was a dark, echoing place. None of this – the carpets, the paintings, the crystal, the gilded banisters, the guards and service people – none of it was there in the castle that The Boy had grown up in. There were no servants, no housekeepers, no cooks, no cleaners, no guards… only himself and his father for the last eight years, and the dry bones of his beloved twin sister rattling in the howling wind against the iron gate.

The Boy had imagined that he spoke to her spirit often, imagined that she grew up with him, that he had hidden her away instead of letting her confront their father. Just ten, just ten – and ten she would always be, and just four feet tall, and just dry bones to haunt him – always. The Boy tried to clear the image from his mind as he and the King passed through that same, but different, gate.

This path he knew well, the winding and beaten path through the castle garden and down into a gully and up over this hill to the Prince’s estate. The Boy would come here often, whenever he could, whenever his father wasn’t beating him unconscious in their “training,” whenever his father wasn’t sending him to fly over cities and encampments to tell him how many “traitors” still lived on “his planet,” whenever he could get a free second to himself.

The Boy and the King crested that same, but different, hill now and The Boy gasped in shock. He had never seen the estate like this – the lawn trimmed, the hedge fence even and brambleless, the roof solid, the door intact. It looked like a real mansion, not a haunted husk – not the corpse that it became. Best of all and most different to The Boy, there were lights and warmth within and he could see someone moving against one of the kitchen windows. He knew that silhouette’s head of long hair, the lithe frame, the short stature  - could it be? The Boy broke into a run.

He burst through the side door that lead directly into the kitchen and cried out, “BERI!” banging the door against the wall hard enough to crack the glass inlaid. The woman in the kitchen jumped in surprise at the sudden violence and dropped a tray of biscuits right onto the floor. The Boy burned his hand on the open oven door as he brushed past it to throw his arms around Beri’s aproned waist, falling to his knees and burying his head in her apron, crying again.

“Uh, I, uh, sire?” Beri turned her confused eyes to the King who stood in the doorway.

“I can’t believe you’re alive! Beri!” The Boy laughed and cried and stood and straightened himself up, rubbing the back of his head in that same way Daiku did after he’d done something foolish.

Speak of the Saiyan, Daiku had felt her confusion and was now thumping down the hallway to see what the hell was going on. He rounded the corner to see a strange young man holding his Beri’s hands, laughing and crying and babbling some kind of nonsense. He also noticed a full batch of his favorite biscuits rolling around on the floor, and he scooped two of them up as he strode into the room.

“What in -omf- ninety eight hells is going -omf- here?” Daiku shoved the bread in his mouth between words. He wanted to know what was going on, yeah, but he also wanted his first meal in 27 hours. As his attention left the bread, he saw the King in the doorway. “Uh… sire,” he added.

The Boy dropped Beri’s hands as soon as Daiku spoke, and was transfixed to the spot, staring at Daiku like he’d seen a ghost. In one way, he  _was_ seeing a ghost, but the man who stood before him had not been killed yet. The Boy jumped clean over top of Beri and threw his arms around Daiku’s massive shoulders. “SENSEI! YOU’RE ALIVE, TOO!”

“Uh… yep?” He cocked an eyebrow and opened his hands in confusion, gesturing toward the King and mouthing,  _What is going on?_

“First things first,” the King began, “How is the Queen, how is the Princess, did you find the doctor, what is his progress, and where is my son?” the King ticked off his questions, one through five, on his fingertips.

Beri answered the first two, “My lord, your wife is strong. She is helping Bulma recover a memory right now, but based on her previous meditative sessions, she should be awake within perhaps 15 minutes. The Princess Bulma’s body is healed; the damage to her womb was significant, but her near death was caused by blood on the brain. The Queen has secured two of the five tethers on Bulma’s soul already.”

Daiku dislodged The Boy’s death grip from his shoulders, shoving a biscuit from the floor into the kid’s interrupting mouth. “You next.” He turned his attention to the King. “My lord, I found the doctor on the north road out of Caarte and brought him here directly to heal the Princess and relieve some of the strain on the Queen. Prince Vegeta chose a different route to look for the doctor, and we were separated about 14 hours ago. I do not know where he is.”  
  
The King stroked his beard thoughtfully. “I see. How was he when you parted?”

“Distracted, my lord, frantic, at the edge of rage. I would be the same way in his position. After I have eaten, I intend to go find him.”

“Belay that for the moment. Boy, tell them what you told me, answer whatever questions they have, eat something. I need to see the Queen.” The King strode forth, hem of his tunic flapping.   
  
“He has on absolutely no pants.” Daiku noted aloud. “Huh.” He sat down at the kitchen table, laden with a hearty stew, biscuits, rice, potatoes, four roasted shanks of some animal, fruits on ice and vegetables piled high and steaming. Daiku pulled several plates and began ladling food on each. Beri brought another tray of Daiku’s favorite biscuits and several baskets of berries and began serving herself as well. The Boy stared. How long had it been since he’d seen a table laid with so much? All The Boy could cook was rice because it was the only food stuff that was ever delivered to the castle. Rice and rice and rice for … was it really ten years since Beri and Daiku had been killed?

“Eat.” Daiku shoved an empty plate at The Boy. “Some sorrows are smaller on a full stomach.”

“You told me that once.” The Boy nodded and the trace of a smile began to emerge.  

“Did I? Feel like I’d remember that.”

“About eight years from now, you’ll find me crying for my mother, who I never knew. I was here, exploring, and I found her journals and her jewelry. I gave the jewelry to my sister and I kept the journals for myself. I would come here and read her notes, try to imagine her voice, try to imagine my father the way she described him. He used to sing to us, when we were in our mother’s belly.”

Daiku ate, scraping his first plate and lading it again with another helping of meat and stew. “Eight years  _from now_ , but you speak of it as if it happened long ago.”

Beri looked at The Boy, eyes widening. “How can it be?” Tears pricked her eyes and Daiku felt her joy and sadness both pass through the Keiyaku. “How can it be? How can it be?” Beri jumped up from her seat, abandoning her dinner and hugging The Boy tightly. “Daiku, this is the little prince!”

“You’re insane.”

“Daiku, look at him! Look at his eyes, look at his ha-“ Beri started to exclaim.

“Not you,” he waved the woman off. “What, am I blind? Am I dumber than Nappa? Look at his face, feel his ki. Of course this is Vegeta’s whelp.” He gestured toward The Boy with the knife he’d been using to butter a biscuit. “No, I meant you. You’re nuts if you think Vegeta ever sang to anyone in his life.”

The Boy exploded into laughter. That’s just what Daiku said the first time he’d read the passage from his mother’s journal and asked Daiku what his father’s singing voice had been like. “I can’t believe you’re still here. Beri, the first memory I have of anyone other than my sister is of you, you know?”

Beri sat back down in her place at the table. “How can this be? Your little body is sleeping sound upstairs! The King told me to take you home when I leave here in the morning, though I may not leave here for a few days. But either way! You’re just a baby, and yet you’re – you look old enough to be nearly independent!”

The Boy straightened up in is chair a little. “I’ll have you know I  _am_ of the age of independence.” He smiled sheepishly. “Just yesterday.”

“Tell us how you came to be here.” Daiku spoke around a mouthful of meat.

So The Boy repeated his story, much of the sorrow already gone out of him like a tide withdrawing from the edge of the sea, forced away by the bright power of the moon. Daiku and Beri, like parents to him and his sister, were the moon to him. He told them of his father’s descent into darkness, of the war that wiped them out. Of the rips and rifts in time, hanging open like windows or doorways in the air there to walk through.

“I flew right through one once, without realizing it, you know? It was just air opening into air. And I must’ve been in the decades in the past… there were lizard creatures everywhere and Saiyans in chains. It looked like something from out of the Saiyan  histories you used to bop me over the head with. Icejin bastards everywhere, but I thought about freeing them – the Saiyans, I mean. I thought maybe I could get them through the window, back to my time.”  
  
“Reinforcements. Not a foolish idea.” Daiku agreed.

“But it was. Look at me. I don’t look Saiyan. And anyway I was spotted by Frieza’s men within minutes. I’m fast, though, really fast, I mean – even my sister and you couldn’t keep up with me, Beri.”

Beri made a little impressed noise, mouth full as she chewed “Mmm!” Beri’s speed was somewhat legendary among Saiyans, as she was lithe and small of stature instead of tall and thickly muscled like most Saiyans. Anytime someone would make fun of her diminutive stature, she’d say she was –

“Built for speed! Like you always say,” The Boy exclaimed. “Anyhow, I just took the hell off out of there, you know? It took me weeks to find the door in the air, though. I spent… a lot of time on the run, then. Frieza’s men weren’t that tough though.”

“Not that tough?!” Frieza’s forces were notoriously strong. No way had this scrawny kid held his own, much less brushed them off.

The Boy shrugged, though. “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe they put the weak ones here on Vegetasei to keep guard or something.”

Daiku frowned deeply. “That’s not – anyway. How’d you get home?”

“I found the window, eventually. My own time, it smells different. The air does, I mean. Even when Frieza’s men were on the planet, it still had some greenery and some nature. My time… doesn’t. It’s all just blasted down to the dirt. The land has been razed entirely – burnt, stripped, ki blasted into oblivion. Most of Vegetasei is just dead and desert dry. The Allewater river is poisoned, the Namekian’s grudge in it’s waters make it deadly for any Saiyan to touch, let alone drink. That’s,” the faraway look stole back into The Boy’s eyes, “that really where it all went wrong, I think. So many people were poisoned by the water, and that started a panic. The Dark King, he took advantage of that panic to stir the whole country into civil war.”

The Boy tightened his fist around his fork. “We just… Saiyans just… kept dying. You know? Just dying. And my father… seemed happy about it.”

Daiku knit his brows together. That wasn’t right – Vegeta loved Saiyans, he was proud of being a Saiyan, he wasn’t a complete madman… this couldn’t be true, could it? “How many dead?”  
  
“All of the women. Maybe 200 men remain. We’re effectively extinct.” The Boy told him.

“Hundreds of thousands dead?”

“At a minimum.”

“My Beri?”

The Boy cast his eyes down. “I was small, only eight. You both died in battle against offworld mercenaries hired by my father to put down the rebel fighters in Asket. They conscripted your house. The worst, the worst men in the galaxy. One grabbed Beri, you went for his throat with your teeth – it was a brawl in seconds.” The Boy began to tremble. “I snatched my sister up by the hand and we just ran and ran. We hid here, in the dilapidated remains of our birthhome for a day, maybe more. When we returned, you were both gone. I’m… sorry.”

Daiku reached under the table and put his hand on Beri’s knee. Yes, he would die for her in an instant, and he would kill anyone who intended to touch her without her permission in half that. Beri gave her husband’s hand a squeeze. “What are you sorry for? You were eight, little prince. I’m sorry I failed to protect you.”

“As am I,” Daiku spoke. “You called me ‘sensei,’ but I must not have been a very good one.”

“Sensei, no. You taught us how to survive. Both of you did. You kept us alive when we were babies, my father would never have cared enough to keep us alive – Beri, you were like a mother to me and my sister. We loved you – love you – very much. Both of you, sensei.”

“Where is your sister?” Beri asked, a little excited to see if she was correct about the little princess growing up into a beauty. “Did she come through the rift with you?”

“No, I… she – I…” tears welled in The Boy’s eyes and he angrily dashed them away.   
  
“How long ago?” Daiku asked simply. No details needed. Clinical. Spare the boy any more pain. His eyes were already red and swollen with crying when he arrived, he was barely picking at his food – the child was on the edge of shaking apart, dissolving into the kind of melancholy from which there was no return.

“Eight years.”

“How?”  
  
“My,” he choked, cleared his throat, scrubbed at his eyes again. “My father.”

“Was it –“

“Murder, it was murder plain and simple – he just, he just, he just…” cracks in his voice so far away, he looked suddenly so small, a little boy of just ten, and tears poured out of him then. Beri jumped up and threw her arms around him, gathering him to her like a mother hen, kissing the top of his head. “Shh now, shh. It’s not going to happen like that this time, I promise you that, child. Not this time. Shhh, your sister is upstairs and when she wakes you’ll see her and hold her. Shhh.” And she stroked his hair with such mother-kindness and such fierce love, he felt even more like a little boy again.

“And that brings us to the heart of it,” Daiku said at length. “How do we stop it, and what happens when we do? Do you just go -poof- and cease to exist?”

“I don’t know what happens to me, really. When I go through the windows, it seems like everything is just… off. Off on an angle, like the whole world was knocked out of kilter by the wrongness here. And maybe when the thing is prevented, everything will just settle back into the place it always should have been.”

“Hm. Maybe. But how do we stop it, stop him? I don’t suppose I need to tell you that he could kick my ass into space with the difference in our power.”

The Boy snorted sardonically, “No shit.”

“Watch your mouth,” Beri admonished, popping him softly upside the head.

—

“And so, my love, that’s how it is.” The King finished his explanation.

“He must’ve picked up the poison of that asteroid, Vegeta.” Queen Pea, said furiously. “We never should have used it, we should have destroyed it! Look what it’s done to our son.”

Mallumo Asteroid was a dark body, massive, hurtling through space. So large it had its own atmosphere, Mallumo was filled with an evil miasma. The Saiyan King thought if their covert forces could seal some of that miasma in grenade like deployment spheres, they’d be able to use them as an excellent, effective disruption device when defending themselves from the plots of other worlds. He had been wrong – six of the eight Saiyans in the squad sent to Mallumo killed each other on that rock. Only Vegeta and Nappa had left alive, and they didn’t remember anything about how they got off the asteroid.

There was every likelihood that the Malluma miasma was somehow… sentient, and perhaps it allowed Vegeta to live, living itself in his own ruthless heart these last two years, until the stress of recent events gave it the cracks it needed to escape.

Evil is its own self-fulfilling prophecy that way – a little evil makes it easier to do a little more, then that taint on your heart makes it easier to do even worse. Vegeta had always been somewhat ruthless in his dealings with anyone other than the Saiyans, but it was his love for his people that always balanced out the dark things he did to safeguard them.

Now, that darkness had taken over him, manipulated his mind into thinking there was nothing left but the viciousness, the cruelty and the anger in him that sustained the Mallumo miasma in the first place. Without Bulma, he’d forgotten love entirely.

The Queen was right, and this was the most likely explanation for her son’s soon coming betrayal. Now, how to stop it?  
  
“Did you send for Nappa?” the Queen demanded.

“Yes, he’s to meet us here. I’ve assembled the Crown’s Battalion, as well. Nappa and Daiku, and even The Boy, will be here and I intend to fight him. Capture him. Fix him.”  
  
“See that you do, Vegeta,” her voice still harsh. She reached for his hand with her free one – the right still holding Bulma’s hand, still pouring her power into Bulma, still trying to keep hope alive. “Vegeta…” she whispered. “Do not make me choose.”

She couldn’t imagine having to choose between Bulma, who had become a precious daughter to her and had given her two beautiful grandchildren, and her own dear heart, her King, her Vegeta. She couldn’t imagine the pain of having to let one die to save the other. Even thinking of having to make such a choice stung her eyes with tears like fire.

“No,” King Vegeta reached up and brushed a tear from her cheek. “That will not happen, Pea. It will not.”

“Good,” she sniffed. “Then go get dressed, fool. Running around in your nightrobe.”

“Don’t like the view?” he said, standing and flexing his legs and arms impressively.

“Idiot.” The Queen blushed crimson under the golden glow of her super Saiyan ki. “It’s not… unappreciated.” The King bent double and kissed her head, her face, her lips. “Never fear, my love. Nightrobe or finest armor, I will always come back to you.”

The Queen tipped her chin up to kiss him again, but a little knock at the door disturbed them. “Sorry – it’s Dende. I really need to check on the Princes –“ he said, poking his head into the room. “-ess. Uh, I can come back, she’s probably fine.” Dende flushed plum purple under his cheeks, having caught the King in a state of undress, looming over the queen with her hair in one hand and her chin in the other, both flushed like teenaged Saiyans left unattended.

“Enter. The King is leaving. To dress properly.” The Queen giggled.

The King opened the door to leave, Dende standing aside sheepishly to let the large man come through the doorway before he entered it. “Oh, Vegeta?” the Queen called out, “Send my grandson in here.”

—-

After their talk, Daiku and Beri walked into the bedroom where the Princess was sleeping, with The Boy following close behind. He had never seen his mother’s face – no pictures, no portraits or paintings of her had survived his father’s rage. Daiku tapped twice on the door, and The Boy heard the Queen say “enter” in a lovely mellifluous honey warm voice.

He walked in and was rooted to the spot, instantly. His “grandmother” was sitting in a chair alongside the bed, holding another woman’s hand, and she shone with a radiance like sunlight, blonde haired and blue eyed. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life laid sleeping in the bed – long blue hair flowing down around her shoulders, her skin the same creamy pale color as his sister’s had been.

“Are her eyes like mine?” The Boy asked.

“No,” the Queen told him. “They’re sky blue, crystal blue, blue like the clearest water.”

“Did she ever tell you what she was going to name us?” The Boy asked, wonder and joy in his voice.

“No, my dear, she didn’t. What do people call you?” the Queen asked.

“Boy. Or The Boy. My sister was girl.” The Boy lost only a little of his enthusiasm. There she was! His mother! She’s alive! He was in time. He sat down at the edge of the bed, near the queen’s chair. “Can I touch her?”

“Certainly. It will not harm her. Dende has repaired her body, I’ve just been coaxing her soul back into this vessel.”  The Queen gestured to the little green doctor, sitting on the couch across the large room.

“Thank you both, for what you’re doing for my mother.” The Boy took Bulma’s free hand, stroking the top of it with his thumb gently. “Mother. I hope you can hear me. I hope you wake up soon. I’ve always, always wanted to hear your voice. I’ve always wanted to meet you, you know? I’ve always wanted to see you.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “I read your journals… no one can believe that dad really sang. When you wake up, can you teach me the melody? Better yet, can you smack some sense into my father? He’s… he’s lost without you.”

Beri walked into the room from the adjacent nursery, holding the tiny newborn Princess in her arms. “She woke up all on her own, just laying there and listening, the second you began to speak.” One tiny hand poked out of her wrappings, the little princess flexed her fingers, almost in an attempt to grab at something. Beri placed the precious little bundle in The Boy’s lap. “Here is your sister.”

The babe wrapped her little hand around The Boy’s finger immediately. He looked down into his lap and for the fourth time today, and the fourth time in eight years, he wept – tears splashing down on the baby, a baptism of protection and a baptism of sorrow all at once. The little princess sneezed.

“That’s right, my little one.” The Queen placed her free hand on The Boy’s head. “No need to cry, big brother, you’ve come to set things right and we will help you. The King will win his fight. You’ll see.” The Queen’s sweet voice was gentle and reassuring in his ear. “I need to meditate and try to contact your mother’s soul.”  
  
“Right.” The Boy swiped a hand across his eyes, “Okay, I’m going to go. I’ll see if I can help the King.”

“Oh, no, no. Sit down, you’re coming with me,” the Queen pressed. “With your power as one of the Saiyan Gemini, you should be able to easily attain the necessary power level and focus.”

“The Saiyan what?” The Boy looked at his young grandmother in pure confusion. 

“You don’t even know what you are.” The Queen clicked her teeth. “I will explain in greater length what you are and who you are, but for now, suffice it to say that you, in your unascended state are very nearly as strong as I am at this level.”

“What?”

“You are. But that strength requires awareness. You have to know, have to believe, have to have unshakable conviction in your own physical superiority to your opponent. Of course, you’ve been so badly treated, all your life, it’s no wonder you aren’t in tune with that ability yet.” The Queen patted his head. “Daiku, please go find Nappa and get to the King. He must survive whatever is coming – on pain of death, you will return my husband to me.”

“Yes, your highness.” Daiku stole a kiss from Beri on his way out the door, and was gone.                                                                                                    

“Beri, please take the babies and Dende and settle them in to sleep. I assume you’ll be staying here, as well, but please sleep soon yourself.”

Beri scooped the little princess up from her brother’s lap. “Yes, highness. Come Dende.”

The little green man was rubbing his eyes and acquiesced instantly. Namekians were definitely not nocturnal. Beri laid the baby down in the nursery, then left the room entirely, Dende in tow.

“Now then,” the Queen began, “Just try to match your ki to mine – the same strength, the same flow.”  
  
The Boy studied her form and let his ki flow outward as hers did, a peaceful stream, a pool of water undisturbed. “Yes, that’s just so. Now, focus on my breathing, and I will focus on your mother’s breathing, and we’ll go through together.”  
  
The Boy closed his eyes and felt a sleepy pull, a floating feeling, come over him. 

“Don’t fight that,” the Queen’s voice rang out in his mind. “It’s only us. Come along.”

—

_Bulma stood in the kitchen, about four months pregnant. The antefasting battle was a memory fading into the fabric of their lives, and two months had passed in relative ease. The pregnancy made Bulma prone to fatigue, so Vegeta forbade her from training. He tried to prevent her from even doing yoga, but she insisted that was good for the babies, for the birth, so he let it go._

_He let most things go, when it came to Bulma. Most everyone did – it was the effect of the pregnancy, she thought. Vegeta knew it wasn’t. It was her own charm, her own irresistible pull. Meeting her meant befriending her almost instantly, even though she could be abrasive, vulgar, rude and spoiled. She had some power over people. It made her irresistible._

_She rummaged through the fridge and Vegeta watched her. The bump of her belly poking out from under a shirt that didn’t really fit anymore, she was piling food on top of it and holding the stack in place with her chin. “Woman, what are you doing?” he asked, one brow raised._

_“Look, hee hee,” she giggled, sticking her arms out to the side and holding the sandwiches, fruits and vegetables in place with her chin and her bump alone. She stumbled and tottered, nearly losing her balance, and losing several of her snacks in the process._

_“Don’t play around like that!” He jumped up, picking her up, food and all, in his arms. “What if you fall?”_

_“Oh, Vegeta, really, how much of a clutz do you think I am?”_

_He just stared at her, his silence the only answer to that question._

_“Put me down, husband!” she demanded, pointing her nose in the air and using her most regal tone of voice. Vegeta’s knees almost buckled, but he tightened his grasp on her instead._  
  
“Woman, don’t do that,” he said, referring to her ability to turn her words into irresistible commands. Damn flaw of the species, he thought. “What room are you going to?”

 _Bulma laughed against his chest. “Upstairs sitting room. I’m going to write in my journal a little.”_  
  
“Mm.” Vegeta mumbled a vaguely affirmative acknowledgement and carried her up the steps to the second floor sitting room she preferred to his own study on this floor. Vegeta walked up the steps, thinking that he’d ask a few attendants to come over and swap the furniture in the two rooms. Maybe then Bulma would stay on the first floor, where she couldn’t fall down any steps.

_Deep down, Vegeta knew he was being overprotective. It wasn’t like Bulma went keening down steps every other day, she was actually quite graceful in her own way. But, he thought, kissing the top of her head and depositing her in her favorite chair, he wasn’t taking any chances._

_“Call for me when you want to come down, I’ll come get you.”_

_“Vegeta, I don’t need you to walk me up and down the steps! You’re being weird.”_

_“It’s this, or I tear the whole second floor off the estate,” he threatened._

_“You wouldn’t.” she narrowed her eyes._

_“Try me.” He kissed her lips. “I would destroy stars to keep you safe – a house is nothing to me.”_

_“Vegeta.” She smiled at him warmly and something in his chest tumbled over._

_“Call for me when you want to come down.” He pinched her under the chin and went back downstairs._

_About an hour passed in peace and quiet. Vegeta was buried in paperwork in his own study – preparations, requests, suggestions and plans were being made for his 30 th birthday and since it was a celebration for the entire kingdom, it would take an unholy number of supplies. 100,000 barrels of beer, 200,000 barrels of wine, 75,000 barrels of spirits. The livestock required to feed an entire race a banquet – they’d have to trade for some. The Namekians would provide some of the entertainment, they could use their ki to create illusions and fantastic effects. _

_He was trying to do some meat-math when he heard an all-encompassing rumbling, the sound of thunder over top of him, a soft body making repeated painful impact and his own wife’s scream - and he ran from his study, papers scattering in a flurry. “BULMA!”_

_She was lying at the bottom of the steps, body curled tightly around her belly, crying her eyes out. “I told you to call for me, I told you I would come get you!” He scooped her off the floor, “What did you hit, where are you hurt?”_

_“I fell on the babies!” she wailed, burying her face in his chest. “I hit everything!” she cried and cried. He put her up on the high counter in the kitchen so that he was face to face with her bump._

_“Shh, shh a minute,” he put a finger physically on her lips, ear to her belly. Strong heartbeat, one. He moved his head to the other side of her bump. Strong heartbeat, two. Vegeta let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “The babies are fine.”  
  
“Then why does it huuuuuuuuuuuurt,” she caterwauled.   
_

_“Because you fell down the stairs, you little fool,” he ruffled her hair to annoy her. “They’re upset because you’re upset.”_

_She pouted and cried. “My babies haaaate me!”_

_Pregnant women are terrifying, Vegeta thought to himself. Moods worse than an Oozaru. Of course, he said nothing, smoothing her hair down and getting something cold for her elbow, which was beginning to bruise deeply. Handing her the cold compress, he placed his hands on either side of her bump as she sat on the counter._

_“Little warriors, come out and see your people._

_Little royals, come out and see the land._

_Little prince and little princess_

_Your Kingdom is at hand.”_

_Vegeta sang the old nursery rhyme he remembered his mother singing to him and his brother when they were being stubborn about one thing or another. His voice was deep and smooth, and so sweet. Bulma felt the pain in her belly subside and she would have sworn that the babies were listening, straining at the walls of their warm little world to hear what only they and their mother had ever heard – their father, singing._

And so the third tether was made, and The Boy learned the melody to the song he read in his mother’s journal as a little boy, and he saw the man his father could truly be.

 

—

The King stood atop the battlement, looking up into the black of night at something darker still. He had sent lookouts 50 miles in every direction and when he saw the ki blast signal come from the watcher to the southeast, he knew Vegeta would be arriving soon. He hoped the lookout got away, and since he saw no further blasts of ki light up the night, there was a chance he did.

 Now, the Dark Prince Vegeta loomed above his father’s head by 30 feet in the air, and was perhaps 40 feet away. Close enough for ki combat, not close enough for the physical restraints the King hoped to clap on his son until he could be relieved of this madness.

The Queen had been right – this was the work of the Mallumo miasma. His son’s entire body, even the whites of his eyes were covered in an inky blackness, no hint of his caramel skin remained, and his black Saiyan eyes were overthrown by an evil bloody red. Teeth far too white were displayed in a rictus grin drawn tight across his face. 

  
“Father.” The Prince’s voice spoke.

“You are not my son.”

“But aren’t I? Aren’t I the one you sent to cause the death of millions, while you sat here comfortable and safe on your throne, with your Queeeeeen,” the Prince’s voice mocked and stretched the words out unnaturally. “Aren’t I the one you used to do all your dirty work, aren’t I the one this  _entire race_ used to carry out evils untold in the name of  _protecting someone they love?”_

“Vegeta! Fight this!”

“ _Vegeetaaa, fight thisss.”_ The shadow mocked. “Vegeta has fled, coward that he is. I am the Dark Prince, here for my crown, here to show this worthless race what it is to create a Dark King!”

Dark Vegeta charged the King then, closing the gap between them in less than an instant, landing on the battlement just long enough to use its solidity as a launching point as flung himself, screaming his rage, at his father. They clashed brutally – elbows flying, teeth gnashing, feet and fists making shattering impact with their targets. The King locked his hands in the Dark Prince’s hair and delivered a crushing headbutt and the younger man staggered back, shaking stars from his head. He snapped his arms back, and deadly light filled his hands. He thrust them forward with a tortured scream in many voices, “GALLICK GUN!”

Light filled the corridor of the battlement, but King Vegeta fired his own ki wave back. Now it was down to who was the stronger man. They screamed. They felt the ki tear like electricity through their bodies, burning its way out of their hands in unstoppable waves.

Suddenly, the Dark Prince was tackled from behind and went hard to his knees. A crushing blow upon his head. A stab like fire through his middle. Heavy boots to his back, and a man cried, “NOW! THE RESTRAINTS, NOW!” It was Nappa’s voice, and Daiku was still pummeling him senseless. The King flew across the battlement, iron chains in his hands.

The Dark Prince reached up, grabbing Daiku’s hair and smashed his face into the rough stone of the battlement. Nappa was behind him in a flash. The Dark Prince drove an elbow into his ribs – snap, snap, snap went the bone. The King looped a chain around him. The Dark Prince spun and escaped its loop. He snatched the chain from the King’s grasping hands. The Dark Prince wound the iron chain around the King’s neck and with an almighty snarl, pulled the chain taut.

The King’s world went black.

He could smell the iron of the chain.

Taste the iron of his blood.

The Dark Prince hauled the King’s limp body to the edge of the battlement and kicked it off. The King plummeted to the ground, landing with a sickening crunch of bone.

The Dark Prince faced Nappa and Daiku. “All hail the King.”


	8. Train

Kotonari V – Train

The memory was cut off abruptly. The Boy jumped to his feet in a flash, as lightning cracked the sky outside, and he stared at his grandmother, whose ki had ceased it’s regular, soft, mist-like flow over Bulma and his own form. Now, it was spiking out from around her in every direction.

  _It’s happened._ The Boy thought.  _My father has killed the king._ “Queen Pea?” he tried to draw her attention.  _You must not leave!_

 The Queen swallowed, throat suddenly closed and dry. “Yes, child?”

 “It’s the King, isn’t it?”

 “Yes, child.” Tears began to burn the corners of her eyes – what now should she do? Every fiber of her being burned to fly out of this room, out of this house, across the estate and to her beloved as fast as she had ever flown in her life. But now she knew - she never could again.

It was no longer just a choice between her heart and her head – nor was it a choice between her children and her love… it was now a choice between her selfishness, the ferocity of her love and the lives of all her people. One on side of the scales, that heartdeep, lifedeep love for her husband and King. On the other, existence itself. Everything, everything she had done, every bloody battle and dark decision she had ever made was for the Saiyan people. How, now, could she turn her back on that responsibility? She knew that it meant the end of the Saiyans if she obeyed her heart.

“I’m going.” The Boy stood. He squeezed his grandmother’s hand. “I didn’t come here only to lay my pain at your feet. I came here … to save my people. To save my sister. And,” he paused and looked again at the slight, thin body laying on the bed, “to save my mother.”

 “Child, don’t. The King… my husband was stronger than you. You don’t know how to access your true power. If you could… but you can’t, and I can’t train you now, and –“

“Queen Pea.” The Boy interrupted, an already fond smile creeping across his lips. “I don’t know how to access the power I’m supposed to have as half of the Saiyan Gemini, that’s true.” His kind smile spread, eyes soft. He remembered the song from his mother’s dream, his father’s true voice – a lullaby he had always, always needed. The holes in his heart – mother, sister, peace, safety, people – were rent wider and wider and wider by the sweet memory, and every stab of pain was dear to him.  _This is my mother. These are my people._ He felt rage, a dragon roaring in the cage of his heart, building up, ready to burst forth; still he smiled kindly at his grandmother. “I don’t know how any of that works. But I’m alive. And I must try.”

And like a shot, he was through the open doorway, through the bathing chamber where he was born, and out through the hole the Queen herself had kicked in the roof, and out into the darkness of the night.

Pea sat, the heaviest stone in a raging river, as her ki stormed around her. She reached out to the King through their bond again and again, and found only darkness each time, only void where her lover’s voice should be.

Inside and out, the storm raged.

—

“All hail the King!” The darkness in Vegeta cackled with its stolen voice. Daiku and Nappa were on either side of the Prince on the battlement, the narrow corridor of stone setting them up for a pincer attack. They rushed him, screaming their fury.

Up Vegeta shot into the starless night, up they shot to chase him. Storm clouds swirled. Lightning flashed. Rain beat down upon them as the thunder cleared its mighty throat, like knives of fire as they drove themselves up, up, up into the dark chasing the Dark Prince. He stopped dead in the air, snatching Nappa up like an errant leaf in the strom, crushing his windpipe in a stranglehold. Daiku, never stopping, hurled his body into them both. Down and down they plummeted with the rain, a clot of fists and teeth and fury.

They struck the ground like an asteroid, crater in their wake. Still the battle raged – fists flew, feet kicked out in furious blows, again and again they flashed like the lightning above, blasting each other with the force of their lives. Daiku remembered the blow to the back of Vegeta’s head, lain there by his father only a day before. He clasped the fingers of both hands together, arms a sledgehammer now, and bore down with all his strength on the spot.

Pain radiated out in a poison spiderweb, out from the impact to Vegeta’s skull. He staggered. He stopped.

He laughed.

The storm raged around them.

Vegeta threw himself at Daiku, snarling in too many voices at once, carving a trench in the ground as his ki cut the earth he flew over. Nappa flew in from the side, smashing Vegeta to the ground in a tackle, holding him there, holding him there. The rain raged and Vegeta flew up, up in a tight spiral as Nappa crushed and crushed his chest in thick arms like steel cables. Nappa’s legs swung wildly, blood and rain blinding him and one of Vegeta’s elbows smashing again and again on his head.

Nappa let go.

He burned a trail through the rain, hot on Vegeta’s tail as the Dark Prince answered a ki blast from Daiku with a thousand burning shots of his own. As Nappa crossed paths with the blast, he felt himself begin to burn, as if he’d flown into the sun itself. Vegeta had taken the blow from Daiku’s blast and redirected his own scatter of shots to center on Nappa, who found himself engulfed. Nappa could smell his own skin, see his Prince’s face twisted up into the most horrible grin… and fell, flat to the ground.

Daiku rushed the Prince once more, but now he was fighting one on one. Even when Vegeta had been in his right mind, Daiku had been no match. But something in him, some flame, became an inferno.  _My Beri? Killed? My princess dead? My little prince destroyed by his own father? My people eradicated? What Dark Prince? What fool ever dared?_ His rage spurred him forward and he knew no pain. Fists and feet and teeth. Crush. Kill. Stop at all costs. This was the last song in Daiku’s heart.

From Nappa’s place on the ground, he watched a star fall – lavender and lightning, it grew and grew, closer and quicker until it was not a star, but a man. A boy.

The Boy’s hair stood up on end, he glowed with his strange aubergine ki, and he screamed in a voice made mighty by rage, “VEGETA!”

Daiku and Vegeta’s brawl paused and the Dark Prince hung there in the air, burning up with his fury. Fury feeding the monster inside him. The monster feeding the fury more strength as it grew. An endless, self-fulfilling prophesy of destructive strength.

Behind The Boy was the Crown’s Battalion in full battle armor, 50 Saiyans – strong and brutal fighters, all. These were the men and women handpicked by King Vegeta and Queen Pea to defend their home and their lives from all comers. Each of these 50 were brutal fighters - they did not compete in arena matches, they did not honor fight - their only fighting experience was real world, life or death. Their bodies didn’t know  _how_ to pull a punch - every blow would be unleashed with lethal force. In a fight for your life, he who hits hardest, lives longest. These Saiyans had been tested within an inch of their lives many times over.

The darkness that had invaded and enslaved Vegeta’s mind was malevolent, but intelligent. It knew. The Dark Prince stood no chance against 50. This should have been ambush, an assassination, something easy to pin on another, the kindling for a glorious war. Now, it would be only moments, moments now before Vegeta was clapped in chains and tossed in the deepest hole ever dug. The miasma saw its chance slipping away and made a choice.

The Dark Prince snatched Daiku up by the hair with one hand – he was unguarded, shocked by The Boy’s arrival. With the other hand, the Dark Prince whipped a knife from his boot and tore it across Daiku’s throat.

He tossed him to the ground.

Lightning flashed and the rain pounded harder and harder still.

The Boy flew from the sky to catch his sensei’s body before it was too late.

The darkness swirled around them. The starless sky screamed with wind and rain and thunder. At the next crack of lightning, Vegeta was gone.

—

The Boy shredded his shirt and wrapped it around Daiku’s throat tightly. Two of the Crown’s Battalion landed next to him. Blood and muddy rain soaked The Boy. “Sensei! Sensei!”

“The –“ Daiku choked, blood flowing from his mouth.    
  
“Don’t talk! Don’t talk!” The Boy was frantic now. Which memory would be worse – never knowing how his sensei had died in the past, or watching him die right now?

“-mekian.” Daiku choked out again.

“What? What?”

Now, The Boy heard a woman’s voice screaming orders behind him. It was Beri, drawn from her fitful sleep by the pain her husband felt. No one was faster than she, and Beri had set a new airspeed record as she fled the Prince’s estate and to her lover’s side. “Give him to me!” she screamed at The Boy, who kept his hands wrapped around the makeshift bandage on Daiku’s throat.

The Boy looked up at Beri in her battle armor, one arm reaching down to her fallen husband, one arm carrying a bundle. Lightning lit up the muddy field and he saw that the bundle was Dende. Beri shoved The Boy to the side, sending him sprawling in a puddle. She dropped Dende, who began to glow. “Please!” she cried out. “Please!”

The little Namekian swayed side to side in his strange way, hands aglow and gently around Daiku’s throat. His sensei began to breathe more easily. And then, after minutes that felt like hours, sat up. Beri collapsed into his huge lap, his arms dwarfing her as he tucked her against his chest. The bloody bandage fell away, soaked in his blood. His throat still bore an angry choker of blood, but it was no longer flowing out of him.

“The King?” Daiku asked The Boy.

“I don’t – I don’t know.” He stuttered, never having seen Namekian healing at work first hand.

Daiku got to his feet, dislodging Beri from his lap. “Beri, take Dende and find Nappa. He’s somewhere close, in bad shape. Then go back to the estate as fast as you can.” Beri’s ki burned, lighting her path like a lamp, and she picked Dende up under one arm before taking to the air to find Nappa.

Daiku turned to the two Saiyans from the Crown’s Battalion, who had stood next to The Boy dumbly, doing nothing, mouths foolishly agape at the Namekian’s healing powers. “You two! Take the Battalion and use your ki to light the foot of the castle’s southern battlement. The King was thrown from there. Find him and bring him to the Prince’s estate.”

“Sir!” The Saiyans snapped to attention, saluting for just a heartbeat before flying back into the sky to communicate their orders to the rest of the Battalion.

“And you,” Daiku looked down at The Boy, still sitting in the puddle Beri had thrown him into, “Which way did your father go?”

“I’m not sure.” Shame burned The Boy’s ears. He had come to help, but had accomplished nothing. “Between the lightning flashes, he slit your throat and threw you down. He extinguished his ki and seemed to disappear into the dark.

“Then he’s on foot. Come on, we need to find The King.”

—

The door to the bedroom smashed open and Queen Pea couldn’t help herself – she jumped up from the chair next to Bulma and ran to her husband. He was barely breathing. Arms, legs and spine all crushed from the fall. Welts and bruises around his throat where the chain had strangled him. He would soon be dead.

Bulma would die without the Queen’s ki sustaining her lifeforce.

The King would die without someone keeping his lifeforce attached to his body.

_What do I do?_ The Queen knew she couldn’t save them both. She had been awake for almost two days, and her strength was not infinite.

“What do I do?” The Boy asked, echoing her own thought.

“What?” She asked, still clutching the King to her chest.

“First,” Dende spoke now, forcing his way between Beri and Daiku, who were blocking the doorway, “you should all get out of my way. Just lay the King out flat, please,” he instructed the Queen and Daiku, each half holding the fallen monarch.

They obeyed the little man, laying the King out on the floor. Dende set to work immediately and the Queen couldn’t stop herself – she withdrew her ki from Bulma and wrapped it instead around her husband. He hadn’t died – his soul was still present in his body, and this wouldn’t take long. The Queen could only hope that she’d have enough energy left to sustain Bulma.

“Queen Pea,” the Boy demanded, “Tell me what to do!” He gestured at his mother, dying now on the bed.

“I’m sorry, boy. I… I made a choice.”

“That’s not what I asked! I’m asking you how to save her!” Bulma’s chest shuddered as her breathing became more ragged as the King’s became steadier.

“You’re not a super Saiyan, child. You cannot do this.” The Queen confessed sadly.  _Forgive me, forgive me. I’m sorry, children._

“But I AM one of the Saiyan Gemini! I can do this!”

“I’m sorry.”

The Boy clicked his teeth, looking and sounding like his father now.  _Whatever,_ he thought,  _I’ve been in there once. I can do it again._

And like a traveler who was shown the way only once, but who paid careful attention on the trip, The Boy spread his ki over his mother, gently, gently. He let it soak into her skin, flow through her veins and through his own. He filled her lungs with the same electric impulse that filled her own. She felt… like home. And of course, this had been his first home. His ki and his spirit knew this place, and settled in to where he used to belong. He pulled her along in his heartbeat, in his breath, in his soul.

They were linked, the whole room lit in a lavender light. Bulma’s breathing matched The Boy’s. He felt himself falling down into memory.

—

_Bulma sat on the plush couch next to Vegeta, after Queen Pea left the room. They both stared at the door, as if it could provide any more information than the Queen had already done. Pregnant? …Pregnant? Twins? Her head spun. The Prince’s hands had not moved from their place on her belly, and they trembled just slightly._

_I’m going to be a father? He thought. How… is that possible?_

_Bulma smiled thinly at Vegeta. “So. Babies.”_

_“Is that -” he turned toward her, eyes a little wider than normal, “is it - do you - are you - Saiyan women do not - that is, this is my fault, I promise I will do my best as a mate and a father.”_

_Bulma took his hand. “Yes, you will. But Saiyan women do not, what, exactly?”_

_“Uh, Saiyan women do not become pregnant unless they wish to. And I knew you weren’t Saiyan, well of course you aren’t Saiyan, but I didn’t think…” Vegeta felt the air run out of his normally inflated ego. He felt surprisingly inadequate and lost. He always assumed he would produce heirs, multiple heirs, and that his children would be powerful. But had he assumed they would be legendary? And accidental?_

_“I’m happy, Vegeta.” Bulma snuggled into his side on the couch. “Very happy.”_

_He turned a little on the couch, angling his chest for his woman to rest her head, resting his own on the furniture’s overstuffed arm. She listened to his heartbeat, strong and steady, through his chest. “Vegeta… know what?”_

_His chin was atop her head and he tilted it to one side, breathing in the scent of her hair - sweat from the fight, soap from her earlier bath, and underneath that - just her. Just her own honey sweet scent, like a field of flowers under warm sunlight._

_“Hm?”_

_“You know… how I ended up here?” She wrapped her arms around his waist._

_“You made a wish.”_

_“Yep. You know what I wished for?”_

_“You know I don’t. You’ve kept it from me.”_

_She chuckled a little, vibrating against his chest. “Yep. But you know what? I’ll tell you.”_

_Vegeta cocked an eyebrow and looked down into her upturned eyes. “You said it was embarrassing.”_

_“It is… a little. I’m supposed to be a woman of science!”_

_“And..?” he prodded._

_Bulma nestled in to Vegeta’s chest. Strong arms around her. The steady rise and fall of his chest. The way he inhaled so deeply, smelling her hair and writing the memory into his heart. Everything in this moment was perfect. “And what I wished for was not scientific. I felt so alone, so rejected, so angry. So I wished… I wished for the dragon to take me to the one man in the universe who needed me as much as I needed him. For the one man who would never abandon me, would never betray me. I wished for the dragon to send me to the man I was destined to be with.”_

_Vegeta’s heart had a stranglehold on his tongue._

_“And then I turned up here. In your lap.”_

_Vegeta’s cheeks went red with the memory._

_“You thought I was a whore.”_

_Vegeta’s ears felt like they were on fire. “You,” he accused, “thought I was a dream.”_

_Bulma giggled and nuzzled his chest. “You are. You are a dream. Everything I ever wanted in a lover, in a friend. Vegeta, you…”_

_“I’m not a good man, Bulma.”_

_“I disagree.” She sat up again, still folded into his lap, but staring into his eyes now. “I don’t think that’s true at all.”_

_“You don’t know what you’re talking about. And I should have told you, I should have told you before the antefasting battle, before you became -”_

_“Vegeta. I’ve read your mission logs.”_

_All the color drained out of Vegeta’s face and he turned to stone underneath her. “You. What.” His voice was flat, monotone._

_“I’ve read them. All of them. I know what you’ve done.”  
  
“How?” He felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room, as if he were adrift in the stillness of space._

_“Your mother. She gave them to me. All of them. You’ve done…. Terrible things - for your people.” Bulma grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. “Your mother said I’d find out about these things eventually, that the Keiyaku bond would eventually show me your nightmares and dreams. I’ve known for weeks.”_

_He stood up suddenly, sending Bulma falling to the floor. She put out a hand to stop herself and wrenched her wrist painfully, crying out. Vegeta stood robotically, feet away from her. “I never wanted you to know… I’m not an operative anymore. I thought I’d just… put that away. I never want our children to know.”_

_“Vegeta.” Bulma closed the distance between them, still rubbing her wrist with her uninjured hand. “You wake up screaming. I’ve known that something was wrong for a long time. Your mother just… answered the question. I still love you.”_

_When she spoke, Vegeta could feel it. The bond between them filled with warmth and wanting, steam and sugar. She still loved him._

_“Why?” He let her close her arms around his narrow waist, under his armor and cape._

_“I don’t know.” she was whispering now, into the nape of his neck as he held her. He smelled like cedarwood and lavender. “When I read those logs, I felt like I was being ripped apart. I imagined you in all those places, making those choices, trying to protect the people that you loved. I imagined the guilt. I felt… all of it.”_

_She was starting to cry … because Vegeta felt his own heart breaking._

_“That you bore all that alone… it’s not fair!”_

_“It was fair.” he insisted. “It was my burden to bear because I was the only one who could bear it.”_

_Bulma hugged him more tightly still. “All I wanted, when I made my wish, was a little loyalty. All I wanted, I have.”_

_Vegeta had never believed in destiny. What you made happen, or what you allowed to happen, were the only things that could shape reality. What you demanded, what you built, what you took, what you destroyed - these are the things that were. But what had he ever done, who had he ever touched, to deserve this gift?_

_Dragons, he supposed, were wiser than he. He opened his mouth to tell her that everything he loved was in his arms, that he would now choose a different path, that he would spare her every pain he could, that she was now the whole world he would give anything to protect. The words turned to ash in his mouth and he could only trust that she could feel their meaning through the Keiyaku… the way he could always feel her love._

_The scent of wood and fields filled Bulma's lungs as he held her tighter..._ And another link from this world to Bulma's soul was complete.


	9. Train - Part two

The Dark Prince snarled to himself, furious that his assault on the castle had failed so miserably. After seeing those reinforcements arrive, the darkness inside Vegeta knew the whole operation was a bust – but how? How had the castle guard assembled the Crown’s Battalion so quickly? Why had the King been on top of the castle? Why did he have those two, Nappa and Daiku, with him?

From all the memories that the malevolent force had stolen from Vegeta, it knew that the King should have been asleep. It knew that the King did not associate with Nappa. It knew that Daiku was, essentially, a celebrity brawler. Why this motley crew? 

And most of all, The Dark Prince wondered: who was the purple haired boy who lead those elite Saiyans into battle?

He trudged along the ground, having extinguished his ki to disappear into the blackness created by the stormy night. So far, he had not been followed. The Dark Prince walked and walked, seeking answers in Prince Vegeta’s memory about The Boy who screamed his name.

**_Vegeta._ **

_Fuck you. Get out of my head. Get out of my body._

**_Vegeta._ **

_Fuck you._

**_Vegeta._ **

_Fuck you._

**_Vegeta._ **

_Fuck you._

Miles passed under the Prince’s feet as the darkness that drove him argued with his soul mired in the miasma. This, they had done before. The miasma, that malevolent intelligence spreading from an asteroid as it hurtled through the galaxy – engendering hate, fear, death and discord wherever it passed – it knew Vegeta well. It had wormed its way into his soul for years, but never had it been so thoroughly rebuked than when that woman came.

That woman.

That woman almost ruined everything. The brightness of her light forcing out all the shadows in Vegeta’s heart had almost ruined everything. The Dark Prince was glad she was dead.

_Fuck you. Get out of my head._

**_Vegeta… who was that man?_ **

**** _Tch. Just a boy. Also: fuck you. Get out of my head._

**_Vegeta… Bulma is dead._ **

**** _Fuck you._

 Vegeta, the true Vegeta, from the prison of his mind had realized many things in the days of his captivity. First, Bulma was not dead. He found himself… remembering? More than remembering, like reliving, like living for the first time, his favorite memories with his woman. The taste of the wine on the night he first realized he loved her. The sight of those celebratory explosives – _fireworks –_ on his birthday. The terrible sound of Bulma falling down the stairs that day, how he surprised himself by singing to her to soothe her pain. The sweat and sunshine and honey smell of her hair on the night of the antefasting battle.  In every memory, he felt the Keiyaku opening more and more. If he thought it were safe – that this miasma wouldn’t spread – he would reach through their bond right now to see her face.

 He wondered if his mother was doing that on purpose – binding Bulma’s soul to this world with memories that would bind his own. _Mothers are terrifying._ Pea was truly a master tactician… unless this was all by chance.

The second thing Vegeta realized was that the miasma needed a steady stream of reinforcement to maintain its hold on him. His rage, his insecurity, his feelings of inadequacy, his fear… it fed the miasma. The destruction that darkness wrought using him – the murder of that Namekian, the attack on his father – fed its appetites. As the Keiyaku opened again, Vegeta’s soul grew calmer, more determined. He spent hours just meditating, stuck inside himself, calming himself, focusing himself, while his body choked his father and murdered his friends.

However. Vegeta was certain now. Now that its plan to kill the King had gone wrong, cracks were starting to form in the dark hold it had over him. Without further acts of carnage, Vegeta’s true soul would become the stronger force, and he would expel it.

He would. 

He just had to stop it from doing anything else in the meantime.

**_Vegeta._ **

_Fuck you._

**_Who is the boy?_ **

_Fuck you._

\---

 

“OKAY!” The Boy snapped his eyes open, met with morning light streaming through the curtains. “That’s enough of that memory!” His father had been lowering his mother to the bed, and as glad as he was to see them together and in love – that was far enough for any son. The storm clouds from the previous night had cleared – the sky was blue and clear, like his mother’s eyes.

Queen Pea snorted from her chair. “Quite the pair, aren’t they?” She had one brow raised and pointed a finger down her throat in an exaggerated gesture of sickness. “Sweet enough to gag you.”

The Boy laughed, smoothing his ki back over his sleeping mother after it had retracted in his haste to abandon the memory. “Are they always like that?”

“Depends. What did you see?”

The Boy repeated the memory, and the Queen laughed loudly, “Oh DID they! That was my room, you know.”

“Rude.” The Boy continued to chuckle.

“Quite.” The Queen studied The Boy’s face. “Are you… terribly angry with me?”

“Why would I be angry?”

“I…” the Queen trailed off, her guilt weighing down on her like stone. She looked down at Bulma’s peaceful face. “I abandoned her.”

“Queen Pea,” The Boy met her gaze. “Did the King survive?”

“I did,” boomed the King, opening the door and dawdling the twin babies in his huge arms.

The Boy grinned. “Then everyone is alive!” He reached up to take himself from the King, who dangled the babe down. “Everyone is alive.” He looked around, from himself – little babe, so light and chubby, to his baby sister, his grandfather King and grandmother Queen, his mother sleeping peacefully. The morning light streaming through the window. “Everyone is alive. So, no, Queen Pea, I’m not angry at all. We did what we had to do – all of us.”

Queen Pea smiled at that, and the King crossed over to put one arm around her. “See. His mother’s son. If he took after Vegeta, he’d hold that grudge until the day he died.”

 _Everyone’s alive,_ thought The Boy. _Everyone survived last night. Maybe the future has already changed._ He imagined what it would be like when he got home. Would everyone still be dead? Would he disappear? Would the rift close before he could get home? Would he have to relive his life in order to see how it all turned out? His brows knit together and he tried to puzzle out what he was doing, what he had done. What if the rift moved? What if he couldn’t find his way back?

“Now you look like your father,” the King said, clapping The Boy on the back. “Brows all knit together, scowling.”

“Sorry… I was just thinking. About the rift I came through, and how I really should have marked it or something… I was just wondering if I’m ever going to get home.”

“Too big a thought,” came a voice from just outside the bedroom door frame, “for an empty stomach.” Nappa pushed a cart heaped with fruit and rice and salted fish. “Everybody in this room needs to eat.”

Beri pushed in behind him, knocking him brusquely out of the way. “Including those babies, so give them here, my King. Prince.” Both grown men surrendered the little babes, and Beri hustled them off into the adjacent nursery to have their bottles. They needed mother’s milk, but the rich _g’ge_ milk would sustain them until they could eat more solid foods in a few months.

The King, Nappa, Queen and The Boy descended upon the cart of food like a pack of wolves, each starving. Queen Pea had been awake for days when the King had been injured – she looked a bit more rested, so she must’ve stolen a few hours sleep after the King was stable last night. The King and Nappa were both recovering from near-death injuries, though. The Boy wondered how they could be up and so energized already.

Around a mouthful of rice, he asked, “How come you guys aren’t,” he swallowed, “like… dead?”

Nappa laughed, sputtering fish bits. “Takes more than that to keep me down! I love almost dyin’.”

“You what?” The Boy dropped his bowl in shock.

“Sure, I’ll eat my wife out of house and home for the next week, but the benefits are unreal. I already feel like I could take that dummy by myself.”

“What.”

The King drained a glass of water. “We get an enormous boost to our strength after a near death experience. It’s in our genetics.”

“We?”

“Saiyans.”

“So, I..?”

Nappa burped. “Should be the same, or about. Want me to kick the shit out of you?”

Daiku stepped into the room, smacking Nappa upside the head making way for Dende next to him all in the same fluid motion. Dende greeted the room. “Hello! Good morning!”

The Boy smiled at the little green stranger. “Good morning."

“How’s your mother?” Dende asked.

  
The Boy’s soft lilac ki still flowed over her like mist, tying the two of them together. “I think she’s okay.”

“Let’s have a look.” The little Namekian set his hands aglow and seemed to scan the woman on the bed. “Oh! Four tethers! That’s a relief, we should be able to get it from here.”  
  
“We? It?” The Boy frowned.

“You gotta start getting up earlier, kid.” Daiku ruffled The Boy’s hair. “We decided some stuff hours ago while you were in dreamland with your mom.”

“What stuff?”

“The King and Queen sent the Crown’s Battalion to find Vegeta. They’ll send scouts ahead, communicate by hawkers, and tell us where to find him. In the meantime, you and I, and these two,” he jerked his thumb up over his shoulder to point at the King and Nappa, “are heading in for as much training as we can get in.”

“Training? That’s not going to make a difference, they’ll find him in a few hours.” 

“Yeah, gives us maybe three months? Six if he got pretty far ahead.”

“Did the lack of oxygen give you brain damage, Sensei? What are you talking about? Hours are hours, not months!”

Daiku laughed, joined by Nappa and even the Queen. “Kid, you aren’t the only one who likes to screw around with time.”

 

\---

 

They finished their meal, and in hustled four absolutely enormous Namekians. Easily as tall as Daiku and the King, they wore clothes like Dendes. This one in purple, this one in red, this one in blue, the last in orange.

“Is this the woman?”  
  
“Yes,” Queen Pea said. “So you understand our trouble now.”

“Yes. And how did your son come to be infected with this miasma?” the Namekian in purple demanded. “He could have killed me! What will we do if the miasma spreads, if it escapes him? This whole planet could be in an uproar!”

“Now, now, brother!” Dende pulled at the older – or perhaps just larger – Namekian’s cape. “Can’t you see their sorrows are enough without you yelling at everyone. You _didn’t_ die, so that’s all well now. We are here to help, are we not?”

Piccolo gritted his teeth but said no more on the subject. “Nail and I are here to guard this estate while you three,” he indicated Dende and the two Namekians wearing red and orange, “stabilize this woman’s soul and bring her back.”

“Correct! And thanks for coming.” He grinned up at his hulking counterpart. “Now. If everyone who isn’t stuck in the veil of the dead or a Namekian would please leave the room. We have our own way of doing this, and it must stay our own.”

The room, packed with four full grown Saiyans, plus The Boy and Beri and the babies was stuffy and cramped. Nappa and Daiku were itching to get out and train, so they didn’t wait to be told twice. The King grabbed The Boy by the shoulders and wheeled him to the door next. “The Namekians know what they’re doing. We can trust them with your mother.”

Dende covered Bulma up with his own ki as The Boy’s receded. “I will take care of her,” Dende reassured him.

The Queen left next, exhausted from days of effort spent trying to save Bulma. She stole a glance back at Bulma’s pale porcelain face, and at the little babies Beri was laying on Bulma’s chest for a few moments. Then, the Queen padded through the hallway, ready to plunge headfirst into her own bed.

Beri lingered longest of all, staring down at her lady Princess and the babies. _They should have a little time together, even if she isn’t awake yet._ The little Namekian cleared his throat after a few minutes, and Beri knew she could delay it no longer. She collected the babies and tucked Bulma into bed again. Sexless or not, Beri hated to leave the Princess alone in the room with all these unfamiliar faces.

Two of the Namekians followed her out of the room, closing the door behind them. One remained at the door, and the purple clad one removed himself to the front of the house to keep a lookout for trouble.

 

\---

 

All four men were falling down tired by the time they reached the training grounds. Each carried a heavy pack filled with gallons of water in addition to a massive trunk filled with food. “Sensei, where are we going?” The Boy asked.

The had arrived at the massive, gleaming black marble that was the training ground. It was uncovered, outdoors, with four black pillars, one in each corner of the square “stage” and one white tower in the dead center. The marble stage was not level with the ground beneath it, but elevated about three feet from it. The King stepped up onto the obsidian surface first, making directly for the center tower.

Nappa and Daiku popped up next, followed by The Boy. Instantly, he felt a difference in the pressure around him. It was hard to stand, hard to breathe. He locked his knees and wobbled, trying not to fall.

Daiku lifted the water pack off of The Boy’s shoulders while Nappa took his food trunk. The Boy felt lighter, but the pressure around him was still crushing the air from his lungs. He found himself hyperventilating, just trying to stay conscious. Daiku started to put an arm under The Boy to support him, but Nappa swatted his hand away.  
  
“Don’t. He must do this on his own.”

Daiku and Nappa made for the center tower to join the King, leaving The Boy in his agony.

“Nappa.” Daiku shot a deadly look at the bald Saiyan. “If you ever try to stand between me and that cub again, I will kill you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nappa waved him off, striding over to the King. “Are we ready here?”  
  
The King had his hand on flat stone of the white center column. “That depends.” The King looked to Daiku. “Will that boy survive this? Once I shut the way, we’ll be in here until Beri or the Queen comes to shut it down from the outside.”

Daiku grit his teeth. “He will survive this. He has survived worse.”

The King agreed, and slid his hand vertically up the smooth surface of the white column. The column glowed green and from its pinnacle, a hexahedronical dome began to sprout and spread out to each of the four black pillars in the corners of the training ground. The green glow went up, up through the center column and gathered itself into a green bulb at the top of the pillar, outside the dome.

The walls from the dome transitioned from translucent like glass to opaque, impenetrable walls. They were closed in until someone broke the green ki bulb at the top of the tower. Now, time would move at a snail’s pace inside the structure but continue on unchanged outside. A day outside would be a year within, each hour would give them 15 days to train. If it took the Crown’s Battalion five hours to locate Vegeta, they would have nearly three months inside.

“How shall we pair?” The King asked as the dome solidified.

“By strength. I will go with the King,” Nappa asserted, “You go with the cub, Daiku.”

“Interesting that you think yourself the stronger, Nappa.” Daiku squared up for a fight, but the King tapped his boot and interrupted.

“Test that later,” the King interjected. “It’s best that you go with the boy now.”

The Boy was still at the far edge, having dropped to his knees, struggling to remain conscious. Daiku strode over to him – the King was right. Daiku had been sealed in the training grounds many times before in preparation and conditioning for his fights. He remembered tasting blood for a month after he left the first time – the first time, he had lasted only seconds inside before his own master broke the bulb from the outside.

“Boy.”  
  
The Boy looked up at Daiku from the floor. “Sen – sei – I – can’t – breathe.” He could feel the blood pooling in his legs, his heart straining against the force around him. His lungs struggled to pull air.

“You’re going to die if you lay there.” Daiku was blunt. “The gravitational field in the training grounds has always been more powerful, and sealing the dome intensifies the effects tenfold. You’re experiencing gravity at 30 times Vegetasei’s normal.”

The Boy gasped and wheezed.

“If you don’t start to manually pump your heart, you’re going to die.”

“H-o-www?” The Boy rasped.

“The same way you manually breathe. You’re thinking about your breathing right now, forcing yourself to inhale and exhale. You need to override the part of your brain controlling your heart, and you need to pump it manually until you’re stronger. It’ll take about a week.”

The Boy’s eyes widened with fear. How the hell was he supposed to do that? Override his brain? Manually control his heart?

“I’m serious. I had to do it. Nappa had to do it. The King had to do it. The Queen had to do it. You have to do it.”

The Boy’s vision began to tunnel, blackening around pinpricks of vision. His world spun, his vision swam, Daiku’s voice sounded tinny and far away. He balled his hand into a fist and SLAM – punched himself in the chest, hard – hard enough to force the blood through the chambers of his heart. The chambers refilled with blood once more, squeezed in by the extraordinary pressure around him.

He thought of his sister’s face, eyes hollow as she died on the floor before him. SLAM.

He thought of her bones, disgraced and dishonored, hung like a horror house prop outside the castle. SLAM.

He thought of his father, his real father, the one who sung to his mother and loved her so deeply. SLAM.

He thought of Beri, dead in his time. SLAM.

 

Mother. SLAM

Father. SLAM

Sister. SLAM

Friends. SLAM

 

SLAM

SLAM

SLAM

 

The Boy struggled to his feet, still hyperventilating to keep his lungs working, face turning fiery with the effort.

 

SLAM

SLAM

SLAM

 

Daiku grinned as The Boy perspired and punched, and heaved one leaden foot after the other, again and again until he was walking. “That’s right. Just walk the perimeter for now.”

 

SLAM

Step

SLAM

Step

SLAM

Step

 

 _I didn’t come here to die._ The Boy was determined to survive.


	10. Train, Part Three

Train – Part three

 

Everything tasted like blood for the first three weeks. Water – blood. Air – blood. Bread, rice, greens, meat – blood, blood, blood, blood. The Boy could taste his own blood in everything. Pumping his heart manually had eventually come more easily, and he was able to mentally control it, instead of physically beating his chest to force the blood through the chambers. He had trudged the perimeter of the training grounds for two days without sleep. The Boy was terrified that if he stopped, he would die.

Eventually, exhaustion overcame him and the black tide of sleep rushed in. He had awoken to Daiku compressing his chest. “You didn’t give me mouth to mouth, did you?” he sniped.

“I could’ve let you die, whelp.” Daiku grinned. “You’re speaking more easily.”

And he was. His brain was finally listening, and he was controlling the steady beat of his own heart manually. His breathing was less ragged, but The Boy was still ashen and pale. “Up,” Daiku commanded, pulling him to his feet. “A few more days of this and your body should be strong enough to put these basics back on autopilot.”

The Boy went back to walking.

The air in the dome was absolutely rank. Four full grown Saiyans, streaming with sweat and blood, blasting ki at each other, heating the air around them up with the energy. The Boy, once acclimated to the gravity difference, was the least bothered by the conditions. His world, his Vegetasei, was worse. The King, who had fought horrific battles and been in the sealed training grounds before was also stoic about their conditions.

  
Daiku and Nappa bitched endlessly. Daiku, again, was no stranger to the sealed training grounds – but he abhorred the conditions. The first thing he’d ask the Princess, when she was recovered and inventing again, would be to do something about this barbaric dome. Ventilation, proper bathrooms, gods of the sky – a shower! All these things Bulma could design in her sleep. _Well, maybe not her current sleep…_

Nappa was a hardy soldier, having fought on strange worlds and with gruesome foes, and he had also been in the sealed training ground many times. However, he complained about the situation nonstop, as if complaining kept him breathing. “But King Vegeta! It’s horrific in here!” Nappa hovered by the control tower, trying to figure out a way to vent the dome.

"There is no vent. If you have time to fiddle with that, you have time to train. Daiku!” the King bellowed, “I will see to the boy now. Fight this fool,” he said, gesturing to Nappa as he turned away from the bald Saiyan.

“Yes, sire!” Daiku flew at Nappa, sledgehammer fists at the ready. They sparred loudly in the background as the King came to his Grandson.

“How goes it, my boy?”

“Better,” The Boy nodded, still plodding forward on leaden feet. “Daiku says I’ll be able to train soon.”

“You are training.”

“I don’t know about that,” The Boy frowned.

“You are. Every step, every beat of your heart, every gasp for air, it’s destroying your muscles, your cells. It’s stirring up something ancient in your DNA, and when you heal from it, you’ll be ten times the stronger.” The King explained, sighing and running a hand straight up through his hair. “This should have been explained to you long ago.”

“Yeah. Tell my dad.”

“Ha!” The King bellowed. “Actually, the blame for this lack goes to Daiku. Or to his future self. He is your sensei, he should have told you all of this.”

“Yeah.” The Boy was listening, but still every step and every beat of his heart took a separate and concentrated effort. Having a conversation while mentally pumping your own heart was still beyond him.

\---

 

Vegeta, still trapped inside the prison of himself, tried to remember everything he knew about the Keiyaku. The prison was like the deepest, darkest well, and his mind was embedded into the stoney mire of its walls – this is how he saw himself, in his mind’s eye. Bound by tendrils of darkness, trapped, chained to a wall that only existed inside him. He tried to think of the sunlight, tried to think of Bulma. The beginnings of an idea flitted above his head, but each time he tried to focus on it, it fled away – like a butterfly pursued. All he could do was sit in the muck of his mind, created by the miasma, and let it flutter above him until it chose to land.

_The Keiyaku is the key,_ he thought. Unfortunately, as he was not an overly romantic or even sentimental person, Vegeta’s pool of knowledge was limited. Snippets of conversation, that’s all.   
  
“That’s the Keiyaku, my friend.” He rememberd Daiku saying, after Vegeta had described how he’d frozen when Bulma had been injured. He said something about the bond being able to connect the knowledge of the two, ruining surprises and plans. There must be a link, a real tangible thing, between the two people experiencing the Keiyaku – and if there’s a link, he should be able to use it.

Vegeta forced himself to remember his mother, hovering over Tarble’s dead body, golden glowing splendor focused on trying to bring him back. What was the trick?

_I have to link him to this world, Vegeta. I have to find his soul and remind him what it’s like to be alive! If he can remember all the things that keep the living and the dead separate – if he can remember what it’s like to see, to hear, to smell, to taste, to feel something – I can bring him back!_

His mother had been speaking in desperate, hushed tones to his father. He knew that Tarble was too long dead for whatever magic the Queen was brewing.

It hadn’t worked for Tarble.

Had it worked for Bulma?

_My Bulma._

What memories would he have chosen to bind her soul to this world? What memories would he choose to bind his own? The night of his 30th birthday would do for sight – indeed, would do for many people’s memory of sight. Never before had such explosions been seen on Vegetasei that were purely for enjoyment’s sake. _Yes, that’s Bulma – explosive, disruptive, beautiful. Furious light in the darkness._

Vegeta remembered the sparks of the fireworks as they shone in Bulma’s eyes.

**_Vegeta. What are you doing?_ **

Vegeta shut out the darkness – he was on the verge of remembering something, something important.

The night of the antefasting battle announcement would do for the memory of taste. Her salty skin, her sweet wetness when he bowed before her and lapped up every drop that poured from her as she shook and cried atop him. The wine on her lips, jam and berries and underneath all of that – something that was just … her.

**_Vegeta, stop this._ **

He would never forget the way his heart had stopped when he heard Bulma, pregnant with their children, falling down the stairs. He would never forget the relief that flooded through him as he bent his head to her belly and counted two strong heartbeats, thrumming away with strength and determination.

**_VEGETA STOP THIS._ **

And how did she smell? Like roses and lilacs when she finished bathing. Like sunlight and sweat when she trained beside him. Like honey and bread when she was sneaking back from the kitchen in the middle of the night. He remembered rolling over and grabbing her by the hips one night, as she tried to silently side back into bed.

_“And what were you doing?” He’d growled playfully into the crook of her neck as she giggled and crumpled away from the warmth of his breath._

_“Nothing! I just needed to stretch.”_

_“Liar. You still have honey and crumbs on your mouth.”_

_She’d reached up to wipe her mouth, but he’d snatched her hand in his, rolling her down on the bed so she laid on her side. She tried to swipe at her mouth with her other hand, laughing in her bright, irresistible way. Vegeta easily caught the other hand and pinned it with her other above her head. He loomed over her and bent his head down, lips hovering just over hers._

_She gasped in building excitement as he ran his tongue over her lips, tasting the sweet traces of honey. He pulled her lower lip into his mouth with the gentlest suction, and she gripped the hand that held both of hers as his free hand cupped one of her tender breasts. He was already hard as he released her hands and slid his own over her belly, then lifted her leg so that it bend at the knee. He held it in place and slowly, slowly, torturously slowly let himself flow inch by inch into her waiting, wet warmth._

_Once he was in to the hilt, feeling her contract and pull him deeper, he kissed her leg and met her eyes. “Still hungry?”_

_“Starving,” she gasped as he began to move inside her, twisting her leg so that her budding pregnant belly was protected and comfortable. In this position, he had total control of her, and he relished the way she let go, let him give her everything she wanted._

**_VEGETA STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING – STOP THIS!_ **

_He remembered the softness of her skin, every time she touched him. He remembered the delicate touch of her tongue, every time she kissed him._

_“Vegeta?”_

_“Bulma!”_ She was standing in front of him. Not in memory, in front of him in the darkness that bound his soul.

_“Where are we?”_

_“I – That, is I – Where are you?”_

_“Vegeta, where are we?”_

_“I’m in my body, but I’m not in charge of it. There’s something else in here, some dark entity that stowed away in my body years ago when I was trying to take control of it for the kingdom. It’s trying to use me to – I don’t know, start a war? It killed my father, it told me you were dead.”_

_“Am I dead?”_

Vegeta wasn’t sure, so he told her the truth. _“I don’t know. Do you … do you remember everything?”_

_“That’s all I’ve been doing – remembering. Remembering all the things I’ve seen and done since I came here. I remember you, all the time.”_ She was beginning to cry _. “All the time. I miss you.”_

Vegeta felt like his heart was in a vice. He wanted to reach out to her, to wipe her tears away, but he was bound in thick chains of the miasma’s power over him. _“Do you remember… our children?”_

Bulma’s eyes widened, and her eyes looked off somewhere, far away. _Her children – THEIR children! “Our children! I do, I remember. The girl, the little girl – her hair was so dark, like yours, Vegeta. I remember her.”_ _  
_

_“And the boy?”_

_“His voice. I remember how he cried and cried until you put him against your chest. I remember.”_

_“You remember.”_ Vegeta’s face cracked into the widest grin it had ever bore, and he felt genuine delight lift his heart for the first time in so long.

**_VEGETA._ **

Bulma stopped smiling at him. _“What … was that?”_

_“The miasma. It wants me to stop thinking about you.”_

Bulma, or her spirit, closed the distance between them. Vegeta felt, actually felt, her palms on his cheeks as she held his head in her hands. _“Do you want to stop thinking about me?”_

_“I want out of here,”_ he whispered, leaning his head into one of her palms. “ _I want to come home, I want to hold you – the real you – and our children in my arms. I want to keep you safe, all of you. I want –“_ Vegeta bit back a sob. “ _I want out of here.”_

Bulma, the ghost of Bulma, or her spirit, or the idea of her – whatever it was standing before him – ran her hands down his cheeks, down his neck, and dug her nails into his shoulders. She pulled and pulled and pulled with all her miniscule might to free him from the sludge that kept him bound to the wall. _“Then come home!”_ She gritted her teeth, she cried with the effort. His shoulders bled, and still she pulled, until she lost her grip and fell to her knees.

Vegeta sighed. _“I don’t think that’s going to work.”_

Bulma jumped to her feet and slapped him, hard, across the face. She huffed, ground her teeth, cocked back her arm and slapped him again. “ _How dare you call yourself my husband! How dare you call yourself the father of my children! How dare you hang there, how dare you give up! How dare you! How dare you!”_ She slapped him again, as hard as she could.

_“Woman, if you slap me again!”_ Vegeta had forgotten one thing. How utterly infuriating she could be. _“I am not ‘just hanging here’ I am trapped, in case you hadn’t noticed while you were slapping the shit out of me!”_

Bulma cocked back her arm, and shot it forward to slap him again – but this time he caught her wrist.

He caught her wrist.

 

He caught her wrist?

 

His arm was free.

 

_“Now that’s my Prince.”_ Bulma grinned.

Vegeta brought his other arm forward, slipping out of the miasma with ease. His legs, his chest, himself – all free.

**_VEGETA, NO. YOU FAILED HER. YOU DESERVE THIS. YOU ARE A DANGER TO HER. YOU ARE A MADMAN._ **

_“FUCK YOU.”_ The Prince and Princess yelled in unison.

_“Come home, Vegeta.”_ Bulma caressed his cheek one last time, before vanishing as a mist into the darkness.

_“On my way.”_

Vegeta raised his power level high, higher, as high as he could – his own ki flashing in the darkness of his mind, burning away the miasma.

The miasma itself saw Vegeta’s strength reborn, coaxed back out by that woman’s devilish light. But it was cunning, it was equal to that. Outside, in the real world, it spat him out. The miasma rejected Vegeta’s body and his soul, but it kept his power.

They stood facing each other, in an empty field on Vegetasei. Vegeta, the man, whole but now powerless. The miasma, wearing Vegeta’s form but made entirely of darkness with glowing red eyes. The shadow laughed. “You’re free of me, but I’ve still won. I have your strength, you have nothing. You’re a fugitive of the crown, being hunted even now by the hawks and dogs. When they see you, they’ll kill you on sight… and you won’t be able to defend yourself.”

Vegeta snarled. “Return my power! Imposter!”

The miasma laughed and flew away into the dawning sun, leaving the powerless Vegeta to stand, vibrating in his rage.

\---

 

Miles and miles away, Bulma opened her eyes.


	11. Travel - Part One

Travel – Part One

 

Dende stepped back from the bed, satisfied and tired. Who knew Vegeta’s memories would be so lewd! Who knew Dende’s theory would work?

Dende had been studying Saiyans and the Keiyaku for a long time, and when he heard that the princess was carrying the rare Saiyan Gemini twins, he prepared himself for the worst - namely, he prepared himself to bring Bulma back from the brink of death. It was serendipitous that the Queen had also known the sacred Namekian practice of preserving and restoring life, since Bulma would have been long dead by the time he arrived.

Once Dende found out what had been going on with Prince from Daiku and the King, Dende had started to form a plan. What if he connected their memories through the Keiyaku? It was always Dende’s plan to have the Prince Vegeta go into the spirit world in search of Bulma’s soul. After all, it was the Prince who had the strongest connection to Bulma, the Prince who had shared most of her time on this planet, the Prince who shared their bond. It was the obvious answer. Without Vegeta available to them, Dende had to get creative.

The morning that his Namekian brothers had arrived, Dende, Daiku, Nappa and the King had talked together in the Prince’s kitchen as the sun was rising. Once the King was restored to health by the Queen and Dende, all the Saiyans had been able to talk about was the battle in the storm.

“That wasn’t Vegeta,” Nappa said. “That looked like Vegeta, and it damn sure hit like Vegeta, but that wasn’t Vegeta. I – that was … I have seen those blood red eyes, but never in Vegeta’s face.”

Daiku agreed. “He wasn’t in his right mind.”

“More than that,” the King admitted. “He has been overthrown.”

Daiku and Nappa looked at the King quizzically. “Overthrown, my lord?” Daiku asked.

“Nappa… do you remember the mission to the Dokuishiki asteroid?” the King named that birth place of the miasma, the spreader of evil and malice throughout the galaxy.

Nappa pushed back from the table. “I try not to."

“What happened on that asteroid, Nappa? All died but you and Vegeta, who came back whole of body but with no memory of the events after you left this planet?”

Nappa cocked his jaw to one side, gritting his teeth and pursing his lips.

“Nappa,” the King repeated himself. “I didn’t push it at the time. We had so much loss to cover up, so many Saiyans dead. You said you didn’t remember, Vegeta said he didn’t remember… we let it go. We let it go, but we should not have. Whatever evil lived there, on that hellish rock, lives now in my son.”

“I didn’t know!” Nappa insisted, standing now, one hand board flat and pointed at the King. “I didn’t know it had taken Vegeta, too. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

“Nappa, I am not accusing you of treason! I just need to know what happened.”

Nappa gritted his teeth, the muscles working in his jaw. “When we landed, we waited for the rest of the pods to arrive. When all were present, we made our egress. Our suits indicated an atmosphere on the rock, good to breathe, stable. We took off our suits.”

The King shoved the empty chair at Nappa, who sat heavily, as if the weight of his tale, of his secret, bore down on him with implacable gravity. “We took off our suits,” he repeated, “and that’s all it needed to get in. From the rock burst tendrils of charcoal black smoke, and the tendrils drove into every Saiyan there – through skin, mouths, noses, ears. Gasping, choking Saiyans fell to the rocky ground.”

Nappa spun a butter knife idly on the table. “Don’t tell him I told you, but I picked Vegeta up and I threw him 20 yards into his pod. He slammed into the back and the pod snapped closed.” He looked across the table at the King, “Elatha as my witness, my King, I didn’t think it had touched him.”

“How did you escape, Nappa?” Daiku asked.

“I didn’t, my friend. I felt that poison invade me, as it did my brothers and sisters around me. I choked and retched as the dark, greasy sizzle made its way up my throat, up my nose, into my eyes. It felt like being thrown into tar – tar that knew things. Knew every cowardly thought I’d ever had. Knew every fear I’d ever buried. Showed me things. My Choy, raped and beaten by Frieza’s bastards. The King and Queen’s heads on pikes outside the castle. Prince Vegeta and all my friends, all my friends, all my _people_ crushed and broken and dead before me. All this in moments, all this in the few moments it took Vegeta to depressurize his pod.”

Nappa didn’t want to talk about this, but it now bore saying. “My King, what I saw in 30 seconds was enough to make me want to take my own life. That… is how the other Saiyans died. They killed themselves on that fucking rock, driven insane by the miasma. Vegeta blasted me to within an inch of my life as I was about to drive this hand,” Nappa indicated the blade of his palm with a shake, bringing it up to his chest, “through my heart. Indeed I may have died and been resuscitated by my pod, for that is where I awoke.”

The three Saiyans shared a silent exchange of looks. Dende, little Dende, was the one to break the stalemate. “Then, if he was exposed then as everyone else was, Vegeta has been enduring these same images – these same thoughts – for years?”

“It can be assumed,” the King stated.

Dende left the Saiyan men at that, heading back to the bedroom to check on The Boy, who was keeping his mother alive through sheer force of will alone. When he saw that all was well with the boy and his mother, Dende decided to meditate. Surely there was a way to free them both – Prince and Princess. In his meditation, the plan began to form. If he could reach Bulma’s soul, could he send it through the Keiyaku to the Prince’s soul?

If the Prince had truly been overthrown, his soul was trapped in an in-between much like the Princess’ soul. If Dende could use their bond to send the Princess to him, would it give him the strength he needed to break free of the taint? This depended on many things. First, how strong _was_ their bond? Would Bulma’s soul know Vegeta, remember Vegeta, help Vegeta? Or would he be making things worse? Next came the question of his own strength. He was a capable healer, he had studied Saiyans, but could he manipulate a force he had never felt? And could he do it without his people’s help?

A knock at the door interrupted Dende’s meditation.

Beri rushed in. “Excuse me, Dende, there are some of your folk here. And they’re asking for the King, but I think it would be best if you greeted them first. One looks… powerfully angry.”

“Piccolo!” Dende’s face lit up and he ran past Beri into the hallway and down to the door. And his supposition was correct, Piccolo stood in the doorframe with a face like thunder. Behind him were the relieved faces of Forte and Tremolo, and behind them was Nail. “Brothers! What brings you here?”

“What brings us here?!” Piccolo snapped. “What brings me here is the fact that a little green doctor has been missing and a Saiyan Prince tried to kill me!”

Dende’s eyes were wide. “Oh. Well, you must come in, of course. What happened? And I’m not missing,” he said, shutting the door behind him, “at all. As you can see, I simply arrived to our destination much more quickly than you.”

Piccolo rolled his eyes. “Where is the King?”

“In the kitchen, I shouldn’t wonder. But brother, there is trouble here, so please be understanding.” Dende explained all that had happened in the hours since Daiku had found him on the road, as he lead his brothers into the kitchen and the presence of the King.

The King, Daiku and Nappa were still sitting at the table where Dende had left them a little while ago. “King Vegeta, these are some of my people. Piccolo, Nail, Tremolo and Forte.” Each inclined his head in greeting as Dende named them. “Piccolo has had some contact with Vegeta.”

“I see,” said the King. “What brings you here?”

“Your son tried to murder me for the crime of having a nap.” The King arched an eyebrow and bade him tell the full story, which he did, brusquely and without embellishment. He finished by asking, “Are Namekians to be assaulted in public for no crime other than crossing a Saiyan’s path?”

“That,” the King began, “is not what has happened. My son is infected with the miasma from Dokuishiki asteroid, he is not himself.” The King decided to explain, truthfully, the heart of the matter. “His mind is overthrown by that poison, and he is not in control of his body or of his power. The Prince has never born any ill will to the Namekian people. I bear no ill will toward you, you are our allies. The Queen herself declared your people protected by ours, she made unprovoked attacks on peaceful Namekians a capital crime. In all your people’s years with us, has any Saiyan ever attacked your people?”

“No.” Piccolo would have been the first to demand revenge and redress, had that ever happened. His people would have told him immediately if they had been harassed.

“Then you must believe me when I tell you that the being that tried to kill you was not my son.”

“Brother,” Dende interjected, “Now that you’re here, I need your help. All of your help, actually.”

Beri bustled in to the kitchen then. “I’m going to cook. Would you like anything?” she addressed the Namekians because of course the Saiyans would want to be fed.

“Just water, please.” Tremolo asked.

“Come,” Dende said, “Let’s get out of Beri’s way and go refresh ourselves while I tell you my plan.”

The Namekians left the room as a group, and the King turned to the other Saiyan men. “Come with me, into the study. I want to take The Boy into the training grounds for a few hours, but we need to formulate a plan to find Vegeta first.”

And so the men departed to formulate their strategies of training and spying, hawkers were sent for and messages dispatched to the Crown’s Battalion. The Boy awoke and all had breakfast before departing, leaving Dende and his brothers to test his theory on exploiting the Keiyaku to free both the Prince and Princess from their bondage.

Piccolo guarded the front door, Nail guarded the bedroom door. Tremolo acted as life support, making sure the Princess had no new wounds to heal and kept her heart beating, lungs filling with air. Forte blanketed Dende, Tremolo and the Princess in his strong ki to support all three lifeforces in their work. Dende would act as the third – the one to go into the spirit world and locate Bulma’s soul. He meditated, aligning his mind with hers and letting his consciousness flow down into the dreamlike world of the dead.

He found her sitting in a room filled with machinery, strange glass boxes that flashed with lights and pictures, the room humming with energy and pulsating with mechanical sounds. She was staring down at great sheets of blue paper with intricate, indecipherable white lines that indicated some great work of steel and ki and fuel like blood running through it.

“Hello,” he said softly, not wanting to startle her.

“Just a minute, I’ve almost got this.” Bulma stared down at her paper, a burning cylinder of paper in her mouth.

“Where is this?”

“My lab.” Bulma finally looked up from her work, breathing smoke out of her mouth and nose. “You’re green.”

“Yep.”

Bulma flicked her eyebrows in acceptance of the fact. “I’m stuck on this problem, and I can’t figure it out. Which is not normal because there’s nothing I can’t figure out. I mean that – nothing. And you’re … green. Small. Never seen you before in my life. These things lead me to believe that I’m dreaming.”

“Something like that,” Dende said.

“Huh. Okay.”

“Would you like to wake up?”

“Yes. I don’t like this dream,” Bulma admitted. “And I feel like there’s something important I’ve forgotten, like I fell asleep in the middle of a project that can’t be late – or like I’m sleeping through an important date.”

“Come along with me, and we’ll see if I can’t wake you up,” Dende walked over to Bulma and extended his hand to her, wearing the softest and friendliest smile he had ever worn. Bulma took his hand and her laboratory faded into mist, replaced by deep black nothingness and the feeling of being catapulted along a rail at hundreds of miles an hour. She felt like she was riding the bullet train with her head out the window of a car – but there was no wind. Just the sense of impossibly fast propulsion, carrying her along a swift river of energy.

Dende saw and felt the trip much differently. Beautiful colors flashed around him, swirling and looping, changing and repeating. No sense of movement, but emotions that weren’t his own flooded his heart. Deepest sorrow, joyful elation, honest regret and strangest of all… a thing Namekians didn’t feel so fiercely… overflowing love. Overflowing love that brought tears to his eyes and rent his heart into pieces. As Dende pushed Bulma’s soul through the Keiyaku, he felt it. He felt what it was like to be a true Saiyan and the devotion they have to their mates.

Bulma slipped past him, through the bond and into the darkness that awaited her when her soul met Vegeta’s.

Dende had done it. They were joined. Now, would Vegeta help her make the final tether to this world? Would Bulma give Vegeta the strength to break free of the miasma. Dende sat back on his heels and waited, meditating while his brothers gave him strength.

 

\---

 

Bulma opened her eyes with a gasp. “Where am I? Where are my babies? Who are you guys?” She stared at Forte and Tremolo, who stood at the foot of her bed.

“Princess Bulma!” Dende cried out, throwing his arms around her neck and hugging her. “You’re awake!” He turned his face to the other Namekians. “Tremolo, get Beri. Forte, get the Queen!”

The two Namekians fled the room with smiles on their faces.

“Princess Bulma, I am Dende. Those were two of my folk, named Forte and Tremolo. Also here are Nail and Piccolo from my people. You are in your bedroom. Your children are safe and well with the lady Beri, who wi-“

“LADY BULMA!” Beri hurtled into the room to drape herself over Bulma’s lap as she sat up in the bed. Beri wept and wept with relief and joy. “You’re alive. You’re alive!” She wrapped her steel cable arms around Bulma’s waist and crushed the air out of her lungs in the fiercest embrace. “Oh thank all the gods and goddesses, all the doctors and healers, all the stars in the sky, you’re alive!”

Bulma laughed despite her confusion. “Beri, you’re crushing me.”

Beri released her, but grabbed for one of Bulma’s hands with one of her own, swiping at tears with the other. “I’m sorry, but you – you’ve been dead for days.”

“Dead?” Bulma’s head swam.

“Oh! Your babies, let me get your babies!” Beri jumped off the bed with such force that Bulma bounced, running into the adjacent nursery and scooping up the little prince and princess before hurrying back to place them both into Bulma’s waiting arms.   
  
“They’re healthy, perfectly healthy. I did my best for them while you were… gone. I kept them always with me, unless they were with the King or the Queen. I was never away from them.”

Bulma cradled the children in her lap, marveling at their beauty. Her heart was bursting with love and pride and… wait.

“Where’s Vegeta?”

Beri looked down. “Princess… He…”

The Queen entered the room. “Vegeta is… not ill, not dead, but something else.”

Bulma remembered him, hanging there in something like the blackest, darkest dungeon. “Wait. I saw him.”

Dende shoved forward now, “You saw him?”

“Just… just before I woke up. I was with him. He was … imprisoned?”

“What happened?” Dende asked, the Queen drawing nearer in concern and curiosity. “Did you talk with him? Is he free?”

“I …” Bulma squinted, trying to remember, but the memory was like a dream – harder and harder to recall the more you tried. “I was with him, in the dark. He asked me if I remembered the children, we talked. I got angry with him because … because it seemed like he’d given up. Like he was content to remain chained in the dark. Like he was content to forget me, forget our babies.”

She stopped to stroke the little prince’s cheek. “So I slapped him. Hard. Twice, maybe three times. He yelled at me. I went to slap him again, and he… he broke free. To stop me slapping him. Because I think – I think he forgot, for just that instant, that he was bound. I think the only thing keeping him bound there was the idea that he _was_ bound there. After that he just… slipped out. He was free. I felt like I was waking up, but I told him to come home. He said he’d be on his way.”

Bulma lifted the babies up to her chest and hugged them both tightly.

The Queen sat down next to her and gathered all three – Bulma, prince and princess – into her arms. Bulma cried. “What is going on?” Bulma asked her, tearfully.

“I’m so sorry. I’ll explain everything,” the Queen assured her. “I’ll explain it all.”

Dende cleared his throat. “One more thing… was there anything else in the ‘dungeon’ with you? Any _one_ else?”  
  
“A voice,” Bulma told him. “A dark, angry, brutal rasp. It said the most horrible things to Vegeta…. Vegeta said that the voice, whoever it was, wanted him to forget me. Told him that he deserved to be trapped there.”

Dende nodded. “It’s as I suspected. This would have happened, sooner or later – the only thing preventing it this last year and some months has been _you,_ Bulma. Your love for Vegeta. His love for you. He needed you. He needed your light to keep this darkness at bay.”

 

_Take me to a man who needs me, just as much as I need him! Take me to the man I’m destined to be with!_

Bulma’s words to the dragon rang in her head.


	12. Travel - Part Two

Travel – Part Two

 

Vegeta was furious. Furious, and weak as a kitten. He felt sure that if he tried to fight his own newborn son, he would lose in his current state. The miasma had left him with only enough ki to remain alive and moving – he could not fly, he could not fight. He could only act as a decoy, while that dark imposter made its plan for the next attack.

Vegeta would be killed by his own people.

He thought about what he would do, if he were his father the King. He would assemble an army to roll out over the skies, hunt down the would-be usurper and order his soldiers to kill on sight. But he wasn’t King, and neither was his father – dead men make no decisions. His mother the Queen would surely be ruling the kingdom now that his father was dead. How would she deal with this?

Vegeta had inherited his father’s power and name, but he had inherited more from his mother. Her temper, her pride. What could be more insulting to that pride than this: her son’s mind warped, his body taken and used as a weapon to kill her husband? Vegeta imagined for a moment that it had been a man, and not cruel fate, that killed his Bulma. Would he have rested one moment without that man’s blood on his hands? Impossible.

Vegeta would have killed his mate’s killer himself. His mother was almost certainly on her way to do the same.

Worst case scenario, soldiers found him first. Vegeta could see hawks wheeling in the air – just birds, looking for their next meal, or hunters ready to report back to their masters as to the whereabouts of their next kill? If the hawkers reported back to the crown’s battalion, Vegeta would be set upon from all sides within the hour. He would be killed on sight with no way to defend himself aside from his words, and what soldier would listen to the ramblings of the madman who had killed their king?

Best case scenario, his mother found him first. Of course, there was the possibility that she, too, would kill him on sight. But Vegeta thought she would choose instead to make him suffer. After all, it’s exactly what he would do.

 

\---

 

The miasma burned darkly, smoldering in its fury as it flew high above the clouds. The day was dawning, bright and despicable. Nothing was going as it should have, not since that night in the rain. The King was dead, of this it was sure, but as it had surveyed the cities it flew over – no signs of mourning were out. No black flags. No change in the daily thrum of life as it crawled over the surface of this doomed world. Were they covering it up? Certainly they would be coming for Vegeta any second now. The true Prince was a ship aground, no defense and no escape. The miasma had everything it needed from him – all his power, all his knowledge.

Now what?

The Dark Prince landed on the outskirts of a village. The sun rose over a distant hill and illuminated the collection of homes around a stone square. It estimated that perhaps two or three hundred people lived here. If one corpse at the castle wasn’t enough to sew sorrow and chaos, it would build a mountain of their dead and stand atop it.

A hawk wheeled overhead as the Dark Prince strode into the village center.

 

\---

 

Cress, the castle guard, knocked at the Queen’s chamber door. “Your highness, we’ve had two sightings of the Prince by the hawkers,” he said through the door 

No answer.

“Your highness?”

No answer.

“My Queen, I’m going to enter…” Cress was willing to accept the consequences if the worst that waited behind the door was his queen sleeping too soundly to be awakened. He couldn’t take the chance that something was wrong with the queen, though – the last few days had passed in a series of horrors. First the Princess Bulma nearly died in childbirth, then the Prince Vegeta went missing, then a strange emissary came with news of an attempt on the King’s life, then the King went into the sealed training grounds… this was the morning of the seventh day and Cress felt compelled to make sure that the Queen hadn’t fallen afoul of the series of black luck that possessed the castle of late.

He entered the room, and found it empty. “Shit!” he swore aloud, scanning the room for signs of a struggle or scuffle but finding nothing much amiss. The bed was made, as if the Queen had never slept in it, and there was a letter on her pillow.

                                           _I have gone in search of my son. If he must be killed, I will be the one_

_to bear that burden. When the hawkers sight him, break the training_

_ground’s barrier and notify the King._

_QVP_

“Great,” Cress muttered. Now he would have to inform the King that his son was found, but his wife was missing. “Just great.” Cress turned from the room and did as his Queen bade, making for the training grounds as fast as he could. If the royal family retained any kind of luck or favor with the gods, they would allow the King to make it to the Queen’s side before … the worst could happen.

 

\---

 

Smoke billowed up from the ground, and the Queen turned in the air to face it. Black, black smoke reached up to the air in clouds and tendrils from one of the smaller villages to the southeast. She streaked off in the direction of the fire – surely this was it’s work.

Pandemonium met her when she landed – men, women and children ran screaming from other Saiyans, who snarled and screamed, launching blasts of ki and attacking their own people. Shadows danced too long, too tall on the ground and eyes blazed red in the faces of the attackers. The miasma was spreading itself.

A tall Saiyan held a girlchild up by the throat. “Daddy!” the child sobbed, “Daddy please let me go!” She kicked her legs and choked, face bruising purple and lips blue. A woman screamed from under his boot. “Zuki, don’t!” He crushed down on the sobbing woman whose arms stretched up toward her child, his child, as he choked the life from her little form.

Queen Pea flashed golden in her rage. “Stop this!” She drove her hand like a knife through his abdomen, plunging out the other side. He dropped the child and his eyes rolled back in his head. The Queen had taken care to miss every vital organ – he would live. “Run!” she commanded the choking child and her sobbing mother. “Run as far and as fast as you can! Run away from here!”

Everywhere she looked, the Queen saw similar scenes – mothers turning on their children, husbands setting upon their wives, little children collapsed in terror. The Queen screamed in her rage, flying up into the middle air above the city. Her rage lent her power and air crackled with lightning around her. “FINAL…” she raised her power high, high as it would go, higher even after that, breaking barriers within herself again and again as she pulled ki from the depths of her soul “EXPLOSION.”

It was like a bomb went off in the city center, a dome of white hot ki enveloping all, burning away the shadows. When the light dissipated and the smoke cleared, Saiyans lay littering the ground below her and she fell down to join them, chest heaving and gasping for air, the effort having almost pulled her apart. She looked around in a daze, stumbling to her feet and beginning to wander through the village. Everywhere, the Saiyans were barely breathing – her attack was a success. It was enough to incapacitate them all. A few laid dead, but there was no way for her to know if she had killed them or if they’d been dead when she arrived.

Queen Pea wept bitterly.

From out of the shadows emerged a form too like her son’s, but black like the void of space with burning red eyes staring out at her from his skull.

“That… was impressive,” it taunted her. “Really, I mean it. You pack quite a punch, my Queen,” the shadow snarled sarcastically.

“Monster,” she spat, blood trailing down one corner of her lips. “Return my son.”

“Ohh, your son isn’t in here anymore,” it said. “All gone. Eaten up by the darkness.”

“Then there’s nothing to stop me from ripping you to shreds,” she charged at him, teeth bared. The battle was joined.

\---

The walls of the dome dissolved, and The Boy stood next to Daiku, looking up as the castle guard he’d met what seemed like months ago broke the ki bulb sealing them in. Outside, it had been 12 hours. Inside, it had been six months. The Boy had trained brutally, along with Nappa, the King and Daiku. Every day for months, they’d torn at each other and learned from each other. The Boy learned Daiku’s physicality, Nappa’s speed and the King’s tactical sense. He felt ready.

Nappa and Daiku were both exhausted. Keeping up with The Boy’s youth had pushed their strength beyond the boundaries again and again. They’d run out of food about six days ago. They were on the last of their drinking water. All four Saiyans were tired, hungry, exhausted and still feeling savage from months of battle.

Cress descended from the tip of the white center tower. “My King. Your son has been spotted and the Queen … is gone.”

The King, still keyed up, snatched Cress from the air by his throat. “She’s what?!”

The Boy stepped to the King’s side and brought his elbow down into the crook of the King’s, breaking the man’s stranglehold. “King Vegeta, calm down. Where is the Queen?” he asked, turning to the guard.

“She went after the Prince.”

King Vegeta growled his displeasure and flew off toward the castle without another word. The Boy started after him, but Daiku reached up and caught him by a leg. “Not so fast, boy. You need to eat, you need to bathe and you need to dress in armor. Now. We need to go after Vegeta together – the King knows this, too – he will not go alone. He’s gone to the castle to make ready, and now we need to do the same.”

The Boy landed.

“Nappa,” Daiku addressed the other man. “Go see Choy, restore yourself and meet us back at the Prince’s estate within the hour.”  
  
“I haven’t seen my wife in six months,” Nappa growled. “It will be two hours at a minimum.”

“It shouldn’t take you two hours to eat and get dressed,” The Boy began, “An hour is enough, we can’t let my father slip away!”

Nappa turned on him. “You’re a pup, so I won’t blame you for not understanding.” Nappa looked at Daiku. “Two hours.”

“Two hours,” Daiku confirmed, thinking of his Beri now, as Nappa must have been thinking of Choy.

“Sensei!” The Boy began to object.

“Six months’ thirst is not easily slaked. You’ll understand when you meet your mate.”

The Boy blushed fiery red. _THAT kind of thirst,_ he realized.

“Come on,” Daiku beckoned, already taking to the air. The Boy followed him up and they made for the Prince’s estate, slowly. They left the empty packs and water jugs behind them, littering the obsidian of the training ground behind them.

They alighted in front of the Prince’s estate where a Namekian man stood sentry. Daiku did not hesitate one step – he could feel Beri behind that door and once again felt himself overcome with a primal urge to be near her. The sentry stepped in his way.   
  
“Who are you?”  
  
“Daiku. Move.”

“Sensei…” The Boy warned. He could feel the air turning electric – were all full blooded Saiyans so quick to fight after they’d been in battle for so many months?

“What’s your business?”

“My own. I suggest you mind the same and make way, or I will make a way through you.”

“Sensei!”

“Try,” invited the tall Namekian.

“Enough!” The Boy yelled as both men slipped into fighting stances. “Enough! I am the Prince Vegeta’s son, this is my home, my mother is inside being helped by Dende and _you just met us hours ago!”_

“What?” the Namekian stepped back, blinking. “Why do you look so different?”

The Boy reached up to rub his face in exasperation and was shocked to feel the beard that had grown over his face. Daiku, of course, had one too and his already wild hair was even more unruly, the weight of grime pressing it down flatly into his forehead and nape.

The Namekian continued, “You’re both so filthy. I mistook you for bandits or beggars.” He stepped aside and turned his back on them. That was all the apology they would get from Piccolo, and it was good enough for them in their ragged and exhausted state. Daiku opened the door before them and called out into the house.  
  
“Beri!” he bellowed and she came running down the hall. He stepped forward to pick her up, but she put both her arms straight in front of her, locking her elbows so that he was forced to keep his distance. “Husband! Bathe. Now.”

He tried to sidestep her arms and scoop her up from behind, but she spun and kicked his legs out from under him. “Now, Daiku. Bathe! I’ll be in to wash your hair.” She pointed to the guest bathroom down near the study. “Now.”

He grumbled and growled but made for the bathroom.

“Hello, child.” Beri smiled at The Boy. “I would embrace you, but you’ve been months without a shower. Use your parents’ bathroom.”

“Thanks, Beri,” he smiled a lopsided grin. “What’s up with Daiku? Ever since the barrier came down, he’s been… weird. Feral, almost.”

“It’s a combination of things,” she said, pulling dressing and drying cloths from a linen cupboard. “First is the hunger. Hungry Saiyans can get savage. Did you run out of food?”

“Almost a week ago.”

“Mm. So, that’s part of it. The other part is the Keiyaku. The sealed dome dampens the Keiyaku bond – it’s not felt as intensely and for some, not at all. When the dome comes down, months of emotions that would have been a trickle come in as a flood, like a dam breaking.”

“So that’s why it isn’t affecting me,” The Boy said. “I’m hungry and tired and cross, but I still have my wits.”

“Yes. The Keiyaku is a great strength and a great liability in some ways.”

The Boy cocked his jaw and frowned.  “So why isn’t it affecting you?”

Beri thought of Daiku’s battle hardened body under the jets of the shower, his hair streaming down his back, the black tufts of hair on his chest glistening. The way the water would run in rivulets between the muscles of his chest, steam beading into drops on his abdomen. She thought of the way his hip bones cut out from the lowest part of that stomach. His long arms, strong hands. Her fingers twitched and she ached and ached to know again the way his scars felt under her fingers as she washed the blood out of that mane. Her heart pounded against the cage of her chest and she flushed. “It is.”

The Boy pulled a face and pulled the cloth out of Beri’s hand. “I’ll see myself to the shower. You should… help Daiku wash his hair.”

Beri flew down the hall as fast as she could.

The Prince and Princess had their own bathroom adjacent to their room and the nursery. The Boy turned the handle of the bedroom door, he just wanted to look in on his sleeping mother and the little babies to make sure everyone was alright. Nail, the other Namekian was absent from the door, and it worried him a little. He walked in to the room and fell to his knees.

In the soft afternoon sunlight, his mother sat up in bed, a baby at her breast. She was alive. She was awake. “Mother!” he looked up at her, tears streaming down his face. “Mother!”

Bulma looked at the stranger like he was insane. “Uhhh who…?” Dende stepped out from the nursery, holding the other baby.   
  
“Hello! How was your training?” he asked brightly. “Don’t cry, my friend. All is well.” Dende handed the other baby to Bulma, who was beginning to fuss. “They’re hungry.”

“Y…es,” Bulma said, taking the baby and letting him latch. “Who is this, Dende?”  
  
“This is the boy the queen told you about.”

Bulma looked down at the little baby nestled in the crook of her left arm. Soft purple hair, delicate chin, big lilac eyes. The same exact features of the boy on the floor in the doorway of her room. “My son?”

“From the future.”

The Boy was still on his knees, staring into his mother’s face. Her beautiful blue eyes sparkled like sunlight on the ocean. It was the first time he’d ever seen them.

“Come here,” Bulma inclined her head, gesturing for him to come up and sit on the bed. “I would come take your hand, but as you can see, I’m a little tied down.” Both babies were latched on and eating hungrily. The Boy stood up on shaky legs and walked across the room to flop down on the bed. “What’s your name, honey?”

The Boy still had tears rolling down his face. “I don’t have one. You…” he sobbed, “you died before you could give me one.”

“Poor little duckling,” tears began to prick Bulma’s eyes as well. She knew he was her son – there was some heart deep connection running through them. She’d never seen him before, but she knew him just as surely as she knew the little baby she held in her arms. She stared down at the little baby, looked up at the man he would become. “The Queen told me everything. You’ve suffered so much.”

The Boy nodded, chin buried in his chest to hide his shame.

“And we lost your sister in your time.”

The Boy nodded.

“Honey look at me.”

The Boy looked up into that oceanic gaze. Bulma radiated pure love for him, and it wrapped around him just as tightly as if it were her arms.

“That’s not going to happen… not again. I’m alive.”

The Boy smiled and threw his arms around her, babes sandwiched in his embrace. He was a little child again, burying his head in his mother’s lap and weeping with joy and sadness and exhaustion. She handed the now sleeping Princess to Dende and used her free hand to stroke The Boy’s soft hair. “Would you like to know your name?”

The Boy looked up at her and she placed the baby Prince next to him on the bed. “Your name,” she tapped the baby softly on the nose once, and tapped The Boy on the nose in just the same way, “is Trunks."

  
Trunks sat up in the bed. “Trunks,” he repeated, picking his baby self up from the bed and placing him in his own lap. Dende handed him the little Princess, who nestled in happily next to her brother. 

“And this,” Bulma said, “little lady is Cipolline. I picked your name because it matches my family line, and your father named little Cip because it matches his own. You’re half Saiyan, half earthling – one hundred percent my son.”

Trunks beamed. _My name is Trunks. Trunks. My mother gave me my name. My name is Trunks._

“And now, my son,” Bulma bent down and scooped the little babies up from his lap, “you need to take a shower. You stink worse than Vegeta after he trains!”

They both laughed until their bellies ached.


	13. Travel - Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut at the end. :3

Travel – Part 3

 

Hours passed. Trunks took his shower then sat in the kitchen filling his belly with the remnants of the last few meals that had been cooked in that house. Half a chicken, half a roast, ten soft rolls, a basket of greens, a pot of rice – Trunks ate as if he’d never seen food before and never would again. Bulma came down the hall, babies sleeping away upstairs, and chuckled to herself as she watched him gorge.

Trunk guiltily wiped his mouth. “Sorry. We ran out of food almost a week ago and I’m… starving.”

“Don’t stop on my account. I’ve seen your dad eat after training, and this is restrained by his standards.” Bulma laughed, and Trunks tore into another fistful of rolls.

“What’se liwwe?” Trunks asked, mouth stuffed full.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Trunks gulped, choked, drained a glass of water to ease the too-big-bite down his throat. “What’s he like?” he repeated himself.

“Who, Vegeta?”

Trunks nodded, shoveling rice into his mouth at a dangerous rate. “I don’t know the same man you know… you know?”

“Queen Pea told me. Your time is all wrong. Your sister…” Bulma trailed off. “Well, you’re right that you don’t know the same Vegeta I know, he’s nothing like the man you described to the Queen. And he would never hurt you, or hurt Cip. When I was pregnant with you two, he actually threatened to tear the entire second story off this house because I wouldn’t stop going up and down the stairs.”

Trunks snorted. “Subtle.”  
  
“That he isn’t. What else… oh! Did you ever hear the story of how we were fasted?” Trunks shook his head no, and Bulma continued. “Well, I had lunch with the Queen and she seemed so nice, so sweet. All of a sudden, the afternoon was over and evening cold had started to settle in. Your dad landed behind me and the Queen got up. As if she thought Vegeta was there to fight…” Bulma’s voice was soft and faraway. “The Queen headed back toward the tall door leading back into the castle and the King was there. It was like a frame around them, like in the oldest fairystories that were full of sadness and danger – and they told me I would have to fight Daiku in order to marry your dad.”  
  
“Sensei?” Trunks mouth fell open.

“Yep. And I was so scared – I had met Daiku before this and he was huge! Huge. And aside from that, he’s the arena fight champion and I am definitely _not_ a brawler. And Vegeta… he was scared, too.”

“He was scared?” Trunks had never seen his father frightened. Or happy. Or really anything but murderously enraged.

Bulma smiled. “We didn’t really know it yet – we were just barely starting to realize it – but we already loved each other very much. He took me up in his arms, high away from the castle and away from the threat of that battle – into the clouds and the moonlight. He promised me,” she said, blushing now with a look of such softness and love that Trunks felt the tumblers of some never-turned lock click into place within himself. _What would it feel like to have a woman look at me that way?_

“He promised you what?” Trunks asked.

“That he’d never let anyone hurt me. That he’d never let me go. And that scared me even more, you know?”

“Why?”  
  
“Because I never wanted him to. I wanted to disappear into his arms and hide myself away in his love. I wanted to let him keep me safe… and I had never wanted anything from anyone, not that way, in my whole life.  Back on Earth, I was – well, I was the same as Vegeta. I was powerful and smart and people looked up to me. People relied on me to keep things running, to keep things moving in the right direction. But with all that power, I could never admit that I really wanted someone to see _me._ Me - not the money or the power, not the influence or the attitude, not the person I used to be, not the teenage love or the best friend… me, one woman trying to support the weight of an empire, alone.”

Trunks studied his mother’s face. He saw so much of his sister in her stubborn face, her serious frown that would suddenly change into a bright grin, as it did now.

“And then I was here. And Vegeta … your dad saw _me_. He saw that I was smart, he saw that I was tough, and he saw… that I needed him. I needed his loyalty. I needed his love. And now,” Bulma felt tears starting to prick at her eyes. “And now, he needs mine. He’s out there, somewhere, with poison in his head. That voice, that miasma, it’s torturing him. And I can’t do anything… I’m not strong. I’m not a fighter like Queen Pea. I’m not fast like Beri. But I still want to go to him!”

Trunks shook his head, “Mom…”  
  
“I know. I know, he could kill me. He’s not in his right mind. I know all the reasons why I should stay here and there’s no good reason I should go. But Trunks – my heart tells me that you and your dad need me there.”

“Lady Bulma, absolutely not!” Beri objected from the doorway of the kitchen. She looked tired and her hair was wet around the edges, as if she’d just gotten out of the bath. Daiku towered behind her, clogging up the doorframe. His torso was bare and his waist was wrapped in the loose cloth that passed for a towel on this planet.

Shaking his hair a little, he said, “I’m inclined to agree, Princess. This will be no place for you. Beri and Choy will be left behind as well, Choy due to pregnancy and Beri to guard you and the babies, so at least you aren’t alone in your dishonor, if dishonor is what you feel. The Namekians will be here as well.”

“Don’t I outrank you people?” Bulma pouted, put out by the universal objection from her friends.

“You may out rank them,” boomed King Vegeta from the backdoor, swinging it open wide and stepping into the kitchen from the back garden, “But you don’t yet outrank me. You, of course, will not be going.”

Bulma scrunched up her face. She was tired of being told what to do by people who, frankly, didn’t know what she was capable of. They assumed that because she was not Saiyan, she couldn’t contribute to the fight. But – who had kept the darkness in Vegeta at bay? Who had reached his soul through their bond? Who was the premier scientist on her planet? She seethed.

She seethed, but she stayed silent. Long days in board meetings, long nights in the lab had taught her one lesson more consistently than all others: _Easier to ask forgiveness than beg permission._ The conversation turned to the Queen and to the multiple sightings of Vegeta.

“King Vegeta, the two sightings are as far away from each other as they could be. Should we assume one is a mistake?” Daiku asked.

“How many Saiyans look like my father?” Trunks asked, dubiously.

“He couldn’t be in two places at once, kid. One of the sightings is wrong.”

“What did the messages actually say?” Trunks asked, causing the King to produce two slips of paper from his pocket – the messages from the hawkers who’d been sent to find Vegeta. The King spread them out for all to read.

 

_Sire – Vegeta outside Caarte. Exhausted. Strike recommended immediately._

 

_Sire – Vegeta is in Jardin. Trouble here. Recommend all forces divert to Jardin immediately to prevent imminent loss of life._

 

“Imminent loss of life? Should we not head immediately to Jardin, then?” Daiku stabbed at the note on the table with a finger. Beri returned from the pantries to spread more food out in front of Daiku and Trunks, who both tucked in almost immediately. Beri ran back to the pantries once more as the King helped himself to a tin of fish, a loaf of bread and four apples as Nappa and Choy walked through the door. Choy was still heavily pregnant and about to pop any day now, but she still looked as strong and robust as ever. Nappa looked pleasantly exhausted – like a cat who’s caught a mouse.

“What’d I miss?” Nappa asked, collapsing into a chair alongside Trunks.

“Kid got a name, Bulma wants to go after Vegeta, King’s men have spotted Vegeta in two different places.” Daiku summed up.

“Good for him, is she nuts, and where at,” Nappa replied, commenting on each announcement in turn. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Trunks,” he grinned. It felt good. Really good – to have a name, to have a mother, to have Saiyans fighting beside him. Hope crept in.

“What kinda name is that?” Nappa screwed up his face. “Not a Saiyan name.”

“No,” Bulma interjected. “His name comes from my people. His sister is called Cipolline, which Vegeta chose.”

“Cipolline!” Daiku, Nappa, Beri and the King exclaimed in unison.

‘Y…es?” Bulma looked a little confused.

“An excellent choice,” the King nodded. “Cipolline was the first queen of Vegetasei. No others have borne her name since.”

“Why?” Bulma asked.

“She abdicated the throne in order to take a common husband. Her father, King again, passed a new law. Saiyans wishing to marry outside their rank and class could do so, provided they obtained the permission of the crown and that the chosen partner could win the right to fast in an antefasting battle. 

“Cipolline’s mate battled for her hand, but lost and was killed,” The King continued. “That Cipolline … followed her love to the afterworld at the end of the battle, driving her hand through her heart, in the same manner that her mate’s opponent had killed him.”

Bulma felt sorry for her, that Cipolline who gave up everything for her mate… and Bulma understood.

“No Saiyan has named their child Cipolline since, afraid that the new babe would share her sad destiny – to change our world, and to die doing it,” the King finished.

“Then why,” Bulma asked, “did you say it was an excellent choice?”

“Because Vegeta must believe this child is strong enough, not only to bear that fate – but to break it,” the King smiled, reaching over the table and cupping Bulma’s cheek in his hand. “As her mother is known to do.”

Bulma patted his hand.

“My lord,” Daiku interrupted, “Jardin or Caarte?”

The King frowned again, brought out of the romantic troubles of the past to the very serious troubles of their present… and future. “The missive from Jardin seems more urgent than the one from near Caarte, but isn’t it possible that Vegeta, in his madness, attacked Jardin and then made for Caarte, exhausting himself and stopping to rest?”

The room nodded. It was the logical interpretation of the two sightings.

“Where’s the Queen?” Nappa asked.

“Unknown. We know from Cress that she went off to find Vegeta, but there’s no telling where she went, since she did so before either message arrived,” the King growled in his irritation. Pea should have waited – now his focus was split when he needed to act decisively more than ever.

Choy spoke up next. “Then you must leave her to it, my lord. If she doesn’t find Vegeta, she’s perfectly safe. If she does, you four will be there to fight with her soon enough. We must proceed as if she weren’t involved at all.”

The men nodded – it was logical. Still, the King’ heart burned in his chest. He could feel some trouble, some struggle inside himself, and wondered if Pea was in danger after all.

“We’re leaving.” The King stood, hands on his hips, barking orders. “Jardin first. Nappa, inform the Crown’s Battalion immediately. Daiku, get dressed. Trunks, go with Nappa and get the appropriate gear from the armory.”

The three men saluted the King in the Saiyan way, fists over hearts and opposite hands tucked behind their backs. Daiku and Nappa kissed their wives, Trunks hugged his mother tight, and then they were all gone in four flashes of light.

Bulma sat at the table, feeling angry and scared and lost – and not much liking it. Choy placed a hand on her shoulder. “Come out back, Princess.”

Bulma cocked an eyebrow. “Why?”

“A gift from Nappa.” Choy gestured for Beri to follow them as she lead the way through the kitchen garden door. “When the King came in through this door earlier, I really thought the jig was up. But either he didn’t notice, he didn’t think it was out of place, or he was too distracted to care.”

“About what, Choy?” Bulma asked, still not getting the point.

Choy gestured to a Saiyan space pod, the oldest model Bulma had seen yet, that had been landed just outside the estate on the opposite side of a garden shed. It was too small to fit Nappa OR Choy.

“What… is this?” Bulma walked over, running her hands over the pod’s weather beaten surface to find the airlock tensioner so she could release it and have a look inside.

“It’s an illegal pod. Waaayyy too broken down to actually make it out of the atmosphere and it really should have been decommissioned and turned into scrap by now.”  
  
Beri frowned. “Why. Is it. Here. Choy?” she growled, already seeing into Nappa’s machinations and hating it, hating it, hating it with every fiber of her being. Beri was fast… if she flew hard, she could catch up with Nappa and kill him dead.

“Because this is wrong,” Choy said, folding her arms across her chest, legs apart, ready to fight if need be. “Bulma has every right to fight for Vegeta’s life. She is his wife. She is his mate. They have the eternal bond of the Keiyaku. _She is our best chance to bring the Prince home alive!”_ Choy yelled.

“She is powerless. She will die!” Beri yelled back. “She has two babies inside, Choy!”

“Uh, excuse you two,” Bulma interjected, “ _she_ is right here, _she_ can hear you.” Beri and Choy looked down a little, each ashamed. “Beri, I’m not powerless. I am a brilliant scientist, and now: I’m going to prove it to you.”

Bulma strode over to the shed, tossing out wrenches and rebar and shovels; flotsam and jetsam of every type she could find – everything metal, anything useful. She found an acetylene torch at the back, and felt sure she had everything she needed.

“I’m going to tear this ship apart and make it into something I can use to fly. I’m going to find Vegeta, I’m going to slap some sense into him, and this will all be over by breakfast.”

Choy smiled.

Beri shook her head

 

 

***

 

In the armory, Trunks picked out a dark purple suit and the same type of flexiplate chest armor his father wore, the same flexiplate boots with the reinforced tip. Nappa gave a low whistle when he saw him dressed.   
  
“You look like a Saiyan, kid. Missing some shit, though.” Nappa walked out of the armory, and returned just a moment later with a full red cape that he clipped into the shoulders of Trunks’ chest armor so that it billowed out behind him. Next, Nappa produced a small pot of  

“Is that _blood,_ Nappa?” Trunks exclaimed.

“It should be, but I ain’t bleeding for ya, kid. Vegeta can do that. His job anyway, or maybe Daiku’s, but I am _not_ getting my ass chewed for letting you into the field unmarked.”

“Unmarked?”

Nappa shoved Trunks half a step backward and brushed the boy’s hair away from the left side of the breast plate. “Tie this shit up, kid. Shame to die ‘cause you got your fuckin’ hair pulled in a fight.”

“Right.” Trunks took a leather string off his wrist and used it to tie up his hair. “So, what do you mean by unmarked?”  
  
“Royalty’s gotta be marked as royalty on a battlefield so if ya die, the person who killed ya can’t piss and moan about not knowing you were royalty when the rest of the Saiyan race comes to kill them.”

Trunks cocked a brow and Nappa snorted. “Don’t know about your fucked up time, but Saiyans are loyal. You are a Prince of the Crown,” Nappa said, dabbing his finger in the red stuff as he traced the Saiyan Royal Family symbol onto the boy’s chest. “This mark on your heart tells the world – ‘you fuck with this kid, you fuck with this whooole goddamn race.”

Trunks found it oddly touching, if vulgar. “And it’s supposed to be in blood?”

“Yeah, your father’s or your teacher’s. I ain’t either one, but this is a weird fuckin’ day,” Nappa said, straightening back up to his full height. “There. Now you look like a Prince. Let’s go kick the shit outta Vegeta.”

Nappa turned to leave the armory and Trunks followed him. At the edge of the room, he stopped as something caught his eye. Trunks sidestepped and removed a sword and scabbard from the wall. He unfastened the buckle and shoved the scabbard under his cape, fastening the buckle again in the front and sheathing the sword. Only the hilt, grip and pommel were visible, poking up near the nape of his neck, and the sword would be fully concealed when he let down his hair.

Nappa gave him a funny look, to which Trunks replied, “What? I like swords.”

The two marched out, Nappa shaking his head, to join the King and Daiku at the sally-out point on the roof of the armory. Both were there already, clad and waiting, when Nappa and Trunks finally emerged from the stairwell.

“Who’s blood is that?” Daiku gestured to the symbol hastily fingerpainted on Trunks’ chest.

“Not mine, so take your tail out of your ass,” Nappa snapped. “It’s fuckin paint. Until his father can do it properly.”

Daiku huffed, but said nothing more.

“Ready?” the King asked. The other Saiyans snapped to attention, and the King lead them off into the skies to approach Jardin.

 

***

 

Bulma looked uncertain. “Uhh… okay, here goes nothing!” She squeezed both her hands, both gloved in steel gauntlets with switches in the palm. The right hand controlled the left boot, the left hand controlled the right boot. Hitting both switches at once should cause both pulsar thrusters to activate in both boots, and she should be able to fly.

Or, explode.

Probably both.

Bulma squeezed her hands shut, squeezed her eyes shut, and squeezed her buns together to lock her legs in place as she shot into the air, spiraling upward and screaming all the while. Beri shot into the air with her and grabbed her by the waist to stop her upward ascent. Bulma released her grip on the palm switches little by little until the thrust was more stable.

Bulma was hovering in mid-air, Beri’s hands still firmly around her middle.

Bulma tapped the two switches twice, rapidly, simultaneously to lock in the current setting. She should be able to let go of the switches to test the blasters now… or she would plummet to the ground.

She let go.

The boots kept her aloft.

“Ha ha!” Bulma crowed triumphantly, “I did it! Yes! I can flyyyyyyyyyyy!” She did a little loop-de-loop in the air, curling in on her abs and dislodging Beri as she did.

“Princess! Be careful!” Beri snapped.

Bulma laughed again. “I did it! I did it!” She sighed happily. “Now, let’s see if the weapons work.”

Beri flew back a short distance and took a fighting stance. “Ready when you are. Remember, if these don’t work, I won’t let you leave.”

Bulma reached over and tapped at a screen on her left arm, fingers flying over the screen for barely a second. The hover settings were working. She tapped again, changing the settings from flight to fight – the switches in her gauntlets would now activate a few different energy wave attacks.

“Ready?” Bulma called out to Beri.

“Ready!” Beri yelled back.

Bulma suddenly remembered her favorite video game back on Earth. MegaMan, the blue bomber. She chuckled to herself – her gauntlets kind of looked like his! _Guess that makes me, what? The blue bombshell? Let’s do this._

Bulma went weapons free – blasting at Beri with ki waves and heat blasts. Beri evaded each, deftly, easily. Bulma spun on the spot, still hovering, but able to shoot from that rail at any angle, and Beri crept up on her little by little, weaving through her shots.

Beri placed both her hands on Bulma shoulders. “Princess, you can’t beat a Saiyan like this, you need to be able to fly around as we do – quickly, nimbly, unpredictably. I can’t let you go after Vege-“

Bulma slammed her fists together in front of her chest and an enormous energy blast surrounded her, knocking Beri off her back and blinding her. Bulma spun around and put the blaster to Beri’s head. “Bang.”

Beri blinked, feeling the energy weapon at her temple. Bulma could have blown her head off just now. All those mornings spent training with Vegeta before her pregnancy, all the afternoons watching the Saiyans train had obviously paid off. Bulma could fight, and now she had weapons that would give her a sliver of a chance.

The weapons also meant that there would be no stopping Bulma from going after Vegeta. He could still, easily, kill her… but Beri knew that Bulma now felt strong enough to take him on, no matter how wrong she really was.

It was a losing battle.

Beri would have to let her go.

Bulma tapped at the screen on her arm and went gently back to the ground. Beri touched down next to her, and Choy gathered both up in her arms and squeezed them into a giant bear hug. “It worked!” Bulma laughed and Beri smiled, despite her trepidation.

When Choy finally put the smaller women down, Bulma looked at them both seriously. “Choy, Beri… will you watch Trunks and Cipolline? Dende will be here if anything goes wrong, and the other Namekians can help you guard the estate. I … have to go after Vegeta.

“I’ll care for them as if they were my own cubs,” Choy said, patting her own swollen belly.

“And I’ll take care of Choy,” Beri laughed. “You’re sure I can’t talk you into staying? Please, Lady Bulma… you just came back from the land of the dead. Your babies need you. This… this Kingdom needs you. You’ve heard what happens when you die – everything goes to hell.”

“That’s not what happens, Beri.” Choy corrected her. Bulma and Beri turned to look at the taller woman as she explained, “That isn’t what happens at all. In that boy’s time, our planet is lost and our people are dead not because Bulma died, but because Vegeta lost all hope. It is hope that he needs, hope that she can give… hope that will save us all. She must go.”

Beri threw her arms around Bulma’s neck. “You must come back – alive and unhurt. You must, you must.”

“I promise.” Bulma said, hugging her friend tightly before shooting off into the air before she could change her mind. She decided to set off for the outskirts of Caarte – the King’s party would be heading to Jardin, and she doubted the King would be as supportive of her decision as her friends had been.

 

***

 

Vegeta had found an empty, if not abandoned, house on a dilapidated farm to sleep in after wandering the outskirts of Caarte for most of the day, slinking from cover to cover and trying to avoid the crown’s hawkers, naked as the day he was born. He was fairly certain he’d been spotted at least once, though.

By dusk, Vegeta had found himself more tired than he should be and he began to search for a safe place to sleep. He’d found the farmstead, windows dusty and doors locked, looking empty. Vegeta had walked through the outbuildings and the barn, finding no signs of life. Not even a barn cat. The grounds were empty.

That was good enough for him. He lit a fire inside, ripping a curtain off the wall and tying it around himself like an ancient Saiyan’s toga. He tried to make the farmstead seem as though it contained a family – the best cover for a lone man was a crowd. Absent a real crowd, Vegeta would try to simulate one. Smoke trickled out of the chimney and Vegeta turned on every light on the property – the barn and outbuildings shown against the purple bruise of night.

Further supporting the idea that the farmstead was abandoned was the total, complete lack of food on the premises. Vegeta was starving. He walked out into the field behind the barn and peeled the bark off a sapling tree, thinning it down to a flexible sinew. He tied a snare over a rabbit’s warren, and with nothing better to do, he waited.

It was over an hour before Vegeta saw movement over the hole. Up popped the head of a baby rabbit. _Tch._ Vegeta abandoned his snare, loosing it with a flick of his wrist – the rabbit kit fled unharmed back into his nest. _Just a mouthful. Not worth killing._

Instead, he loosed the neck of his wrap so that only his waist was covered, and used the rest of the fabric as a makeshift bag for the sap thick greens of lion weeds and the sweet, floral heads of clover plants. Both grew thickly in the field, and he soon had enough to fill his belly. He walked back to the farmstead, stopping to strip the needles off a branch of a tree for a hunger-killing tea.

He walked through the back door of the farmstead and instantly dropped everything he was holding – stunned by what he saw waiting for him.

“Vegeta?” Round, rose petal lips spoke. He stared. Clear, glittering, dazzling blue eyes stared at him. Vegeta stepped forward, crushing the plants he’d gathered for his dinner under his bare feet. “Vegeta, are you alright?” the vision asked, pale skin moving like cream floating to the top of fresh milk, as it removed heavy metal gloves and let them drop on the floor. His hand shook as he reached up to touch her, knowing that she would dissolve into mist as she had done over and over all day long.

He stopped, shaking still. Maybe if he didn’t touch her this time, maybe this time it would last a little while longer – the illusion that he was home, that she was alive. He stood there, hand trembling, breathing jaggedly, blinking hard – both willing this torturous vision to end, and hoping it would never go away.

Bulma grabbed Vegeta by the nape of his neck, both hands desperately grasping his hair, and her lips flew to his. She kissed him again and again, whispering his name, “Vegeta, Vegeta, where have you been? Vegeta, are you alright? Say something.”

Vegeta stood there, stone still but melting little by little as her hands and her mouth fluttered over his lips, his neck, his face, his hair. “Bulma?” He grabbed her by the shoulders, fingers digging tightly into her flesh. “Are you real?"

Bulma frowned at him. Was he really mad now? “Vegeta, it’s me. I’m here. I’m real. Really.”

Vegeta fell to his knees, burying his head against her stomach. Bulma thought he might be weeping. She stroked his hair, his neck, his shoulders. “I’m really here.”

“You’re alive?” he whispered against her.

“I’m okay.”

“The children?”

“At home with Beri and Choy and a Namekian guard. I came to get you, since you seemed to be having trouble getting home.”

“Bulma, I’m sorry,” Vegeta said, still whispering. He leaned his forehead against her stomach, still on his knees. “I broke my promise. I let you die.”

“Vegeta. Stand up.” Bulma dropped her arms from his neck. “Stand up,” she repeated when he didn’t stand. “Vegeta, get up and look me in the eye!”

He stood.

Bulma placed both her hands on his cheeks.

“I did not die. You did not break your promise. None of this is your fault. Whatever darkness was in your head, whatever it told you – it was wrong. Whatever it said about you, whatever it said about me – it was wrong. Your father is alive. Your mother is alive. I am alive. Our children are alive. _Stop acting like such a sadsack and fight this thing!”_

In the blink of an eye, Vegeta was on top of her, peeling her suit down to fill his hands with her breasts, kissing her deeply, roughly, with an unbearable and ferocious need. Bulma arched her back as he pulled the suit lower over the soft curve of her hips. She kicked off the flight boots and wrapped her legs around his back, digging the fingers of one hand into his muscular behind, the thin cloth he wore making no real barrier between them. Her other hand was knotted tightly into his hair, holding his face to hers as she drank his kisses in like a wilted flower.

His lips left hers, only to let his tongue trail over the line of her jaw. He felt something primal taking over his body and he sank his teeth into her neck. Bulma threw her head back as electricity jolted through her, connecting the tender flesh of her neck with the tender flesh between her thighs. Tingling, shuddering – her neck bleeding just slightly, but a river of warmth flowing out between her legs.

Vegeta lapped at the blood from her neck, feeling his senses coming back to him. Bulma squeezed her eyes and her thighs shut and she felt the same way she had when Dende had catapulted her through the Keiyaku to Vegeta when he was imprisoned in the mind of that miasma. Every memory, every sensation they’d ever shared flashed before their eyes and washed over their hearts.

Vegeta, mouth working around one of Bulma’s rosey, erect nipples now, lifted himself up and parted Bulma’s thighs with one hand, guiding his burning member inside of her with one swift motion. Joined again and pumping in and out of her, the flashing memories changed  - every time he’d been inside her, every feeling he’d felt within her, washed over them both. Every thrust into her slick body, every flick of his tongue over her wetness, every delight she’d ever felt, washed over them both now. Everything they’d ever felt alone before, they felt together now. Vegeta thrust in and out of her with incredible speed, skin slapping skin. He leaned down, scooping her up in his arms and crushing her to him, both arms behind her back. Bulma gasped and shuttered and cried. She buried her face in his neck, and instinct made her open her own mouth, biting down into the muscle and sinew of his shoulder. Blood flowed out of him and into her mouth, but it tasted like the sweetest wine.

His chest rumbled in a low, long groan of pleasure as she ran her tongue around the wound, licking and sucking the flesh. He felt the same electric shock run between the bite and his groin, everything firey and aching now. Vegeta sucked the spot on Bulma’s neck as she licked gently at the wound she’d made on his, and the connection was complete.

They both exploded into bliss beyond bliss – a crushing, agonizing, incredible feeling beyond any orgasm ever felt before. Vegeta’s head was clearer than it had been in years, he felt stronger than he’d ever felt before. He gently let go of a panting, overworked Bulma, laying her down beneath him. He was still inside her, both in her mind through the Keiyaku connection and physically, his member was still inside her, still hard. He felt ready to take her again, ready to take on the world after he did. He kissed her lips softly, softly.

“I love you,” he said.

Bulma laid under him, eyes closed. Every time he breathed, his hardness jumped a little inside her. She could still feel … everything. Everything he felt, everything he’d ever felt. Every time she’d ever cum around him, whimpering and screaming out his name, was still flooding through her. Her eyes fluttered open, and Vegeta stared down at her with such love… and such hunger… in his flaming teal eyes, that she began to move against him without intending to, rolling her hips up.

_Wait – teal eyes???_

Vegeta was blond haired, teal eyed and glowing with a golden ki from his place on top of her. “Vegeta!” he ground his hips into hers, roughly rolling his body into hers, creating the most incredible, delightful pressure against her sensitive clitoris. She cried out in pleasure and surprise. “Vegeta, look!”

He looked at himself through her eyes and saw himself a golden, glowing god. He had his ki back, his ability to fight would be above his old abilities a hundred fold, but right now, feeling Bulma’s hot breath in his ear, her warm, wet slickness flowing over his cock as he rolled in and out, in and out of her – the change didn’t seem important.

Bulma hooked her legs around his back, pulling him down and around until he was underneath her. She wanted to see him. His eyes rolled back in his head as the new position plunged his manhood even deeper inside her. Bulma leaned forward, watching him bite his lip as she lifted herself almost completely off him before driving his cock back home, hard. He growled and grabbed her ass in both hands, trying to keep her ground to him.

Those long, slow strokes up. The fast, hard slam back inside. Bulma rolled and rocked up and down on top of him, watching his rippling chest rise and fall more raggedly the more she rode him. She threw her head back and his golden glow enveloped them both as they came together, still connected by the Keiyaku, each feeling the force of their own orgasm and of the other's – passion and pleasure echoing and doubling and rippling out out out in their bodies. Bulma felt as though she would come apart entirely, drift away into nothing. No sooner had she thought it than Vegeta grabbed her hard around the waist with one arm, ramming himself inside her, grinding his hips into hers hard enough to bruise. He grabbed her chin with his other hand, forcing Bulma to look down into the intensity of his eyes.

“No leaving. Never again.”

Bulma quivered and shook around him as he lifted his hips off the floor, both hands on her hips now as he raised her up with him, keeping her pinned to him in pleasure so intense it was half pain.

Bulma dug her nails into his chest, drawing blood. “Never! Never!”

One final thunderclap of an orgasm rolled through them both, and they lay together: panting, sweating, the whole world glowing gold.


	14. Self

Queen Pea stood - chest heaving, heart pounding, lungs screaming. A painful bruise had begun swelling over her left eye and blood trickled steadily out of her mouth. She stood alone, and Jardin smouldered around her. The cobblestones of the village’s central courtyard were tempest tossed and scattered everywhere, the red dirt underneath churned up as if the planet itself had tried to retch and rid itself of the dark thing that walked its surface. The green roofed houses and markets that made Jardin so lively every other day now lay in bits, in heaps, and in flames. 

Again and again, the Queen attacked the Dark Vegeta while terrified Saiyans regained conciousness around her. She’d used the Final Explosion to incapacitate the citizens and keep them out of her way - to keep the Dark Vegeta’s evil intent focused solely, completely on her. The fine line between knocking the villagers unconscious and killing them had to be finessed - and it meant that they would wake up. 

Saiyans are saiyans, at the end of the day. Farmers, farriers, armorers, jewelers, mothers and children, yes - but born of a warrior race. Every one of them would fight, would stand for themselves, for their people, for this village, and for their Queen. Again and again, the Jardin Saiyans tried to aide her, to fight alongside her. Again and again, the miasma poisoned prince used them against her. 

_ Peace. Peace is to blame for this.  _ Queen Pea spat blood, throwing herself in front of another villager with more loyalty than brains, just before he would have been hit with a deadly ki blast.  _ In wartime, we had soldiers in every settlement.  _ In wartime, the Queen would have had help. Instead, as the Saiyans around her woke up from the blast, they saw their Queen under attack. Seeing that, each one threw themselves into a fight they would have no prayer of winning. Each one opened another chink in the Queen’s armor - she threw herself in front of the villagers, again and again, as the Dark Vegeta targeted them lazily. 

The golden waterfall of her hair began to flicker black. She had very little left, but every tear stained face was like a thousand needles in her spine, urging her up, pushing her forward. She was by herself, and it was that very self she would sacrifice to protect her people - and to punish the being responsible for this. 

Very soon, she’d be using her lifeforce itself just to stay standing. 

The Dark Prince laughed from around a garden wall, and the Queen could hear a little boy screaming and choking. Four Saiyan men ran around the corner and before she could stop them, they were blasted, rolling back in a tatter of loose clothing, blood and smoke. “Stay down, fools,” she hissed at the two still conscious. “Stay down! Stay down or run away!”

The little boy was still screaming. 

The Queen left the men, dazed on the ground, and rounded the corner herself. Standing on a rooftop, the Dark Vegeta dangled a child down by one arm - it jutted out at an unnatural angle. The boy’s arm was broken, or at the least it was dislocated, and he howled piteously in pain and fear. Below him on the ground was a woman, dead arms still reaching up for her boy, a single hole through her head still smoking. 

The Shadow laughed, jostling the boy like a marionnette. “What would you do, Queen, to make me stop?” 

“Would you like to find out?” Queen Pea, snarled, deadly anger flaring out as ki, solidified over her flattened palms, twin double sided blades gold and deadly. The shadow’s free hand lazily shot ki beams like bullets at her legs, chest, head - she wove between them, springing off the dead woman’s back and spinning her bladed arms like a dancer. Deadly ends met the miasma’s spongy-void-nothing flesh and the Dark Vegeta’s head came away with a hiss of dank air. 

The little boy fell to the ground. He landed on his desperate mother’s corpse; her last act of devotion to the boy was to cushion his fall enough that his neck didn’t snap. He wailed, useless arm limply clutching his mother’s corpse. 

Muscles in the Queen’s jaw jumped as the boy’s cries tore through her like teeth. So much like her own sons when they’d been babes.  _ My own sons, now lost. My own dead sons.  _

The head laughed.

The first time she’d torn his head off, Pea had thought the battle was over. She’d crumpled to the ground, gulping desperately for air, exhausted by the Final Explosion technique and the fight that followed, her skin and muscle and bones burning inside her. The shadow had strode forward, complimenting her power, mocking her desire to save these people. 

She’d flown at him, fought him furiously with her slicing ki blades, spinning deadly and lightning fast. He’d stumbled, and she made a sweeping, decisive slice for his neck. The black nothingness of his head had rolled away on the ground. And Queen Pea had thought the battle was over. 

It hadn’t been. 

She’d knelt there, gasping for breath and trying to hold her cells together as the energy of her technique tried to force them to come finally, explosively apart. Everything hurt and she could barely see - couldn’t see at all as the head, grinning fiendishly, rolled from its resting place toward her. 

The head exploded, nearly taking off her own. 

Over and over, they’d repeated the scene. She’d stabbed him through the heart, sliced off his head, blasted him with ki again and again. He refused to stay dead, and then the Saiyan villagers started waking up, getting in the way, making themselves targets that she must throw herself in front of again and again - her people’s sword and their shield. 

Pea kicked the laughing head, hard, sending it flying off the roof before doing the same to the beheaded body. She collapsed, breathing hard. Hopefully, she’d kicked him hard enough and far enough that she’d be able to get a few seconds, maybe a minute, to rest. She tasted blood. She felt her ki beginning to tap into her lifeforce. If she stopped now, ran away, went for back up - she would live. 

 

If she kept fighting… 

 

A house exploded into toothpicks on the other side of the village. 

 

She hauled herself up from the rooftop with a groan. 

 

She had to keep fighting. 

  
  


*** 

 

“You’re blonde,” Bulma pointed out, wrapping the loose cloth she’d found Vegeta wearing around her own waist and winding it up before splitting the fabric to cover her chest and tying it behind her neck. 

“No. Really?” he smirked, flashing her a grin. “I hadn’t noticed. No mirrors here.” She giggled, feeling him looking through her eyes at himself as he pulled on her body suit. 

“Also, that’s gonna be… tight, isn’t it?” Bulma stared indelicately at his bulging… muscles in the suit she’d been wearing when she’d flown here. 

Vegeta scoffed. “They’re all tight.” He rubbed a hand through his hair. “I wish you’d have been wearing armor, though. I could use some.”

“Want the blasters?” Bulma said, offering the gauntlets and armband control to him. 

“Tch. Our son could fire blasts more dangerous than those things,” he said, rolling his eyes. 

“Rude. Also, which son?”

“The baby, of course.” Vegeta laughed, straightening and scooping Bulma up in his arms. She tucked her chin into the crook of his neck. “The boy from the future…”

“Vegeta, it wasn’t you… who did those things. He knows that. Now. I think.” 

Vegeta wondered if that was true, but he could feel that she believed it to be. He’d run through her memories of the last few days, feeling her shock and sadness as his own when he “remembered” the way his mother had quaked in rage when she relayed the tale of their bleak future to Bulma. So much death… all because of him. 

Not this time. 

The things that had happened were so profoundly wrong, they’d rent tears in the fabric of reality itself. Vegeta would set things right - right now. 

“I have to go,” he said, stroking the soft blue strands of her hair away from her face before tipping her chin up with a finger and kissing her softly - a promise to return. Her heart ached with every beat and the softest moan escaped her chest. He wrapped his arms around her waist and she melted easily into his chest. “I have to go,” he repeated. 

“Vegeta…” Bulma, looked up, ready to plead. 

“Bulma… don’t be selfish. These little blasters aren’t enough. You’re not fast enough… and I can’t keep myself safe if I’m watching over my shoulder for  _ you.”  _

“That is not fair.” Bulma crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “Don’t you manipulate me like that. You can keep yourself safe just fine and you know it.”

Vegeta laughed. “Fine. I can. But we have two little babies at home who need some kind of parenting.” 

Bulma screwed up her face even more. “Boooooo.” 

Vegeta laughed again, slapping her playfully on the rump. “Besides,” he ran one finger down the exposed v of skin on her chest, uncovered by the thin fabric, nudging it aside over the curve of one breast. “This is … very distracting.” He tickled her a little until her face broke out of its pout. 

“Vegeta! Not fair.”

He looked at her seriously now, cupping the tiny point of her chin in his strong hand. “Bulma. Promise me you’ll go home.” 

“I promise,” she said, crossing her heart with an x using one finger. 

He could feel the lie, like a bow across the strings of a violin - a  jeté , gone in an instant.

  
  


*** 

  
  


Jardin smoked in the distance, flames and ki irregularly licking at the heavens. The ominous premonition in the King’s heart grew and grew, suffocating him like the smoke that stained the clouds above that village. He kept his misgivings to himself and lead the other Saiyans through the sky. 

  
The Crown’s battalion had split off from the King’s party miles back to swing wide and approach the city from the south. From the North, only the King, Daiku, Nappa and Trunks would land and provide the main assault. They would force the poisoned Vegeta into a corner, then the Crown’s battalion would strike with all the fury they could muster. 

He would be killed, eradicated, evaporated. 

This was the sacrifice the King was willing to make - his son’s life for the future of their entire race. Willing to make, yes. Ready to make… he didn’t know. He would rather sacrifice himself. 

  
What would it feel like to see his son’s face stare at him, but not see his son’s soul present in his own eyes? 

 

And why couldn’t he shake the feeling that they were flying into a trap?

 

The King flew forward, the others in his wake, toward the final fight for Vegetasei’s future.

  
  


***

 

Flying astride the King, Daiku rolled the plan over and over in his mind. He hated it, for two reasons. First and foremost because Vegeta dies. No matter what they do, no matter what they find on the ground at Jardin, Vegeta dies. 

Daiku grit his teeth, locking his jaw in displeasure. How can that be his fate? He did nothing to ask for this. It was his King and Queen who sent him to that asteroid to gather their weapon, it was the King and Queen who chose to believe that nothing untoward had happened up there - despite the fact that none other than Vegeta and Nappa had survived. They let the miasma take root inside Vegeta.

_ This isn’t right. _

Second, the plan would almost certainly cost some civilian life. They were supposed to work as a unit, fight Vegeta into a corner of the city and let the Crown’s battalion unleash fiery death upon all below -  _ all.  _ Including the homes, the people, the goods and stock. People would die - if not in the attack, when they returned to find their livelihoods in dust along the streets, when they couldn’t buy food or trade for their children’s clothing. 

_ This isn’t right.  _

Daiku’s jaw hurt. Once again, for the second time in just a few short days, he was considering disobeying a direct order from a member of the royal house. Back over the roads beyond Caarte, he’d made the right choice - to ask for information at a healing house and find the doctor, instead of going with Vegeta to blindly search along the most likely path.

_ But  _ **_was_ ** _ that the right choice? Certainly it saved Bulma’s life, but leaving Vegeta alone - did that not allow for the final bit of madness to take over?  _

 

_ Orders exist for a reason.  _

 

_ The King has a great deal more experience in real, tactical battles than I do. _

 

_ I’m not royalty.  _

 

_ But this isn’t right,  _ Daiku told himself again. But should he try to save his Prince, and doing so, defy his King? 

 

Daiku flew on toward Jardin, arguing with himself all the while. 

  
  


***

 

Trunks trailed behind the King and the man who would become his sensei, wind buffeting the cape he was unused to wearing. Nappa flew behind him, almost lazily, at ease and ready to do what must be done. 

Trunks felt anything but ready. 

His father, the Dark King… would he still be there in the future? Or would everything he had known, every dark day, simply effervese into nothingness, replaced by a life that was good and honorable? Would the cape on his back feel more like an honor and less like a noose? Would every memory of conversations had with dry bones and a void of empty eye sockets be rewritten with his sister’s real voice, her real expression, her real words? Or, would he be stuck here, reliving his life with himself a little baby, watching his father dote on the boy he could have been? Would hate grow in his heart, or would there be only relief?

_ What will happen to me?  _

And of course, the real question - would they even be able to beat his father? The darkness inside Vegeta lent him a superhuman, brutal strength that came with none of the caveats of mercy, or hesitation, or the kind of questions Trunks now faced from himself. 

Trunks was sure his father had never felt this unsure in his life. He flew behind the King who appeared so calm, so sure that this was the right path, the winning choice. Trunks looked at his sensei, Daiku, who had his eyes closed - almost as if he were napping - flying easily alongside the King. 

Nappa, behind him, had turned over on his back to sail through the clouds and look up at the sky. 

Trunks felt that everyone around him had figured life out long ago. 

  
  


***

 

Nappa turned over on his back to look up into the clear blue of the sky. Trunks was peering over one shoulder at him, so he waggled his fingers in an exaggerated wave. 

 

_ I’m still fuckin’ hungry.  _

  
  


***

 

Bulma unclipped the two halves of the wrist computer to carefully remove and unroll a protective battle suit she’d used as fill and lining for the unit. She took off the thin “toga” cloth and wadded it up so that it filled roughly the same empty space around her forearm as she clipped the computer unit back around it. 

She had lied to Vegeta when she promised to go back to the estate.

He had known it, too. 

So why didn’t he stop her, call her on it? Was it because he, too, could feel the need for her to be there, like she did? Some premonition that if she were to go home, to go back to their newborn babies, to go back to safety… that everything would go wrong for him? 

Her head swam.

She stooped and smoothed the skin tight suit over her legs and arms. She was going - whether Vegeta knew it or not, whether he approved or not - either way, she was going. She still had the blasters, she still had a protective suit. She hadn’t come all this way just to get laid - she came to put the motherfucker that hurt her children and tortured her husband in the ground. 

 

***

  
  
  


Vegeta flew toward Jardin. The miasma was definitely there - smoke and blasts of ki could be seen for miles around. Vegeta had been lucky - the luckiest - when he was discovered by Bulma before anyone else. The miasma hadn’t been quite so lucky. Vegeta would be willing to bet that his father was already on the ground, elbow dropping the dark mass with a brutality Vegeta was all too familiar with. 

It would be a short flight. Minutes. The legendary power of the Super Saiyan flowed through his veins and he felt better than he ever had. Bulma was alive. Their children were alive. His father was alive. All the guilt and fear and shame he’d tortured himself with in these last days was pulled into the maelstrom of this new power and that tornadic force spat out just one solution. 

Swift, terrible vengeance. 

Vegeta grinned, seeing Jardin growing closer and closer as he streaked across the sky, a golden bolt of lightning. 

As soon as he landed, he would draw the miasma out of the city, away from other potential hosts and into the outskirts where he could fight it, destroy it, one on one. Vegeta didn’t doubt that his father, or possibly his mother, had some strategy at work that would be disrupted by his arrival - did they even know he’d been able to seperate from the miasma? Did they think he was still trapped inside? Were they trying to save him? 

Vegeta scoffed to himself. When he placed his own life on a scale opposite the lives of all the Saiyan race, he knew who won out. There was no doubt that anyone fighting the miasma was fighting to kill, whether Vegeta was still trapped within or not. 

_ How nice for me,  _ he thought,  _ that I’m free.  _

His gold-tipped boots awash in gold flaming ki touched down in what used to be Jardin’s city center. The village was destroyed, every structure leveled. Saiyans lay in crumpled heaps everywhere - some only unconscious, some in that permanent sleep of death. Vegeta could hear some small child crying, and followed the sound to someone’s destroyed back garden. 

A little boy, no more than two or three, lay atop a woman’s corpse. He was wailing with pain, and Vegeta thought, with rage. 

“Boy,” Vegeta spoke softly, sternly. The little boy looked up, eyes wide as dinner plates, and jumped to his feet. He took a fighting stance, a broken and sloppy fighting stance, and put himself between the woman and Vegeta’s golden glow. The little boy snarled like a wild thing, and ran at Vegeta, full bore - tears streaming, one arm hanging useless and limp behind him as he came. 

Vegeta stooped and let the enraged child run himself into his chest. He folded his arms around the boy, and the fury went out of the child, who resumed weeping as only a child could. Vegeta, squatting down to the ground, held the boy a little, then put him back on the ground at arm’s length. 

  
“What is your name?”

“Cabba,” the babe sniffled, grinding his little teeth. 

“How many years are you, Cabba?”

“Four. I know, I am small.” 

“Would you like me to fix your arm?” Vegeta asked, knowing a dislocated shoulder when he saw one. 

“Yes please, Prince Vegeta.”

“You know me?” Vegeta placed one hand on the boy’s damaged shoulder, the other on his opposite side. “This may hurt.”

Little Cabba closed his eyes. 

“Breathe deep.”

Vegeta slowly pulled the dislocated arm out the the side and over the little boy’s head, elbow pointing away from his side. Slowly, Vegeta brought the boy’s arm up. “Breathe again, in and out, match me.” He breathed with the boy, pulling in deep breath after deep breath. Once the arm was finally up and over the shoulder, he took his hand and moved the boy’s hand so that it pointed down and at his neck. 

“Ready?” Vegeta asked the boy, who nodded almost imperceptibly. In one liquid smooth movement, Vegeta pulled the boy’s hand toward his opposite shoulder and with a loud POP, his arm was back in place. Relief flooded the boy’s body and he stopped crying for the moment. 

“Better?”

Little Cabba gulped and nodded. 

“Can you tell me what happened here?” Vegeta asked the boy. 

“The shadow thing came and it hurt everybody. It killed my mom. He looks like you, but he isn’t you!” Cabba stomped. “The Queen came and she’s fighting it. I think…” the little boy turned his face up to look at Vegeta, “I think she’s losing.”

“I see. How did you know it wasn’t me?” Vegeta asked, a grin pulling at one corner of his mouth. 

“He isn’t marked as royalty.” 

“Neither am I.” Vegeta gestured to his chest, the space over his heart bearing no crest. 

Cabba pouted, face turning beat red and he stomped. “I still knew it wasn’t you. It wasn’t the Prince. It shot my mom in the back! It has no honor!” 

“I see,” said Vegeta, smiling down at the little someday-warrior who reminded him of himself. “Someday, Cabba, you will be a honorable warrior. First, you need to survive today. I want you to get away from here, I want you to get out of this village and head directly southeast. On the ground. A few miles from here, there is an empty farm. Go there, and I, or someone I send, will find you.”

“My mother - but my… mother…” Cabba started to cry again. 

“Cabba.” Vegeta laid his hand on his shoulder. The boy knew that his mother was dead, there was no need for Vegeta to tell him. 

The little boy shrugged Vegeta’s hand off his shoulder, and ran away without another word. His little feet and crying blind eyes leading him southeast out of the village and to safety. 

A ki blast exploded in the distance. 

 

_ Time to face myself. _


	15. Goodbye - Part One

Everything went to hell all at once. The Queen was dead, hand driven through her own heart; Trunks was gone, blinked out of existence. The King was unconscious, his royal cape like crumpled paper in the wind. Vegeta, Nappa and Daiku remained, backs to backs, snarling forward at the Crown’s battalion.

The tension snapped and the warriors burst forward - Vegeta, Nappa, and Daiku against a full battalion of deadly Saiyan soldiers.

Above the fray, the Dark Prince laughed.

 

***

 

Queen Pea rushed toward the exploding house, having hauled herself to her feet from the rooftop where she tried to catch her breath. Splinters that used to be someone’s home flew through the air like morose confetti, burning up into black wisps of smoke as they touched her ki. The Dark Prince stood at the center of the destruction, grinning.

“This has been __fun,__ ” it gloated, “Truly the most entertainment I’ve had in hundreds of years! Saiyans! Ahh, who would have thought that a grabby, greedy bunch like you could provide the most amusement I’ve had in centuries.” It threw its stolen head back and laughed, mouth agape, obscene.

“Really, O My Queen,” he mocked, anger entering his voice, “why did you send your soldiers to me? I would have passed by this rust bucket of a planet. I would have missed out on all of this. I was __asleep. I was asleep!__ Oh yes, when my prison asteroid passes by a planet, I’m well known to sow seeds of hate and anger, war and rebellion, murder and chaos. __But I was asleep when I passed by your planet!”__ It laughed once more. “Had you only kept your stupid soldiers here on their own damn planet, I wouldn’t even have been able to effect your people. ”

Pea’s nose and lips trembled in a snarl, hands balled into fists as it taunted her.

“But you wanted a weapon, didn’t you?” it asked her.

“Yes.”

“You were afraid of another invasion, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” she snarled, limbs frozen. It had her.

“All those Saiyans I killed up there on my little rock. Do you know how they died?”

Pea could feel mutinous tears sliding down her cheeks. She was frozen in place, every limb rigid. Her golden ki fizzled, popped, and left her. She stood there, facing the darkness, poisoned by it the moment she’d touched down near the splintered house. In the smoke of the fires, in the smoke of the matchstick splinters touching her ki, the miasma had sent some of itself. The Queen had touched it, breathed it, and it waited until there was enough of itself inside her to take control.

The whole battle had been a game to it.

“Do you __KNOW?__ ” the Dark Prince snapped forward and screamed in her face. “Do you know how they died? Do you know how they died, sweet little Pea?” The miasma grabbed the back of her head, snatching up a fistful of her hair and wrenching her head back to expose her throat.

It licked her.

It ran its horrible tongue up from her collarbone, over her bared but frozen teeth, over the tip of her nose, over her open eye. It kissed her on the forehead.

“Yes,” she snarled.

“Then do it,” the miasma taunted her. “Do it, or I’ll take your body and use you to kill your stupid King.”

Tears ran down her face.

“ _ _DO IT!”__ the miasma screamed an inch away from her face, spit flecking her face.  “Do it, or I’ll use you as a puppet to destroy your entire race. I will murder every child on this planet with your hands.”

Pea dropped her right fist, the miasma loosening its control.

“I’ll drink their blood with your mouth, I’ll hang their bodies on the walls of your bedroom and I will keep. you. alive as I do it all.”

She flattened her palm and her ki into a blade.

“I will trap you, a passenger in your own body, as I murder the world and laugh in your voice.”

She bent her elbow, pointing the blade at her heart. Her eyes were filled with tears.

__What a fool I’ve been._ _

“Kill yourself, or kill your people. One ruler to another, I give you this gift - this choice.” Its wide eyes were wild. “Bathe in my benevolence!”

She drove her hand through her heart, as King Vegeta landed behind her.

“PEA, NO!” The King rushed forward, catching his wife’s body as it struck the ground. “Pea, no, Pea. No.” He clutched her body, pulling her into his lap as the gaping hole through her chest and out her back poured blood, drenching his hands, arms, legs. The King was awash in her blood within seconds. “My Pea, no. No. No.” The King buried his face in her neck.

He was dimly aware of some battle taking place around him, Daiku, Nappa and Trunks flying at the Dark Prince in their fury.

He was dimly aware of a pair of gold tipped boots touching down beside him, of a great growl of rage and pain howling forth from a golden shadow.

The world receded. All went black.

 

__“Vegeta.”_ _

__

__“Pea.”_ _

__

__She stood before him in the darkness, the only bright spot. She glowed, not with ki or with the power of the legendary super Saiyan. She shone as if some unseen sun illuminated her from all sides._ _

__”Pea… tell me what to do,” he begged his wife. She had always been the tactician, always the brains of the outfit. Surely she would know how he could save her._ _

__“I’m afraid you’ll have to let me go, my love.”_ _

__“No. No. No, Pea,” he reached for her, arms passing through her as if she were mist. “I can’t, I can’t let you go. I need you still. I … I need you always - you are my life, my only love.”_ _

__Queen Pea smiled softly. “I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay with you forever.”_ _

__“Can the Namekians fix you? Can they bring you back?”_ _

__“I don’t think so, my love. I destroyed my own heart. My soul will be gone in an instant, like our Tarble. I looked for him for days and never found him. He is dead, my darling, and now I go to join him.”_ _

__They both wept._ _ ___  
_ __  
_ _ __”Bulma named the children,” he whispered to her. Anything to keep her connected, to keep her here, to keep her by his side._ _

__“Did she?” Pea’s mirage like form was getting more and more faint._ _

__“Trunks for the boy - it’s a name from her people.”_ _

__“And the girl?” her voice was distant, faint now._ _

__“Cipolline.”_ _

__Pea laughed; he could see the smile, the rise and fall of her chest, but he heard no sound. He would never hear the bright tinkle of her joy again._ _

__Vegeta? she mouthed, soundlessly._ _

__“Yes. He chose it.”_ _

__Pea smiled and the King tried to focus on that, not on the way that her feet seemed to have faded away._ _

__“My Pea. I will love you always.”_ _

__She reached out for him, trying to press her weightless form against him and only passing through. She stood as near as she could and looked into the eyes of her King - her husband - her lover. The father of her children. The warrior who had defeated the Colds at her side. The Prince she had met one freezing, rainy day on a far off planet._ _

__

She was a soldier, setting up an occupation for the Cold empire on far off planet Aksala. It often snowed, it always rained, and Pea had never seen a sunny day on Aksala. She missed Vegetasei, the red roads and blue skies, the green fields, yellow flowers. She missed color. She missed anything but black mud, grey water and brown skies.

 

A flap of scarlet red flooded her vision.

 

The Prince was on Aksala.

 

Her eyes were magnetized to him as soon as he stepped out of his pod. The bright red cape clipped to his white plate armor with gold clasps. The deep, verdant green of his suit. She stared at him, starving for the colors of home.

 

And he caught her staring.

 

When their eyes met and electricity passed through them, she felt the Keiyaku for the first time in her life.

__

__Now, inside the dying fires of that same connection, the King watched as death ate at her. Her strong legs, legs that could propel her in a dance as easily as propel an enemy to his death, were first to go. Then her stomach, first home of his sons, that place where he had often rested his war weary head, was gone. Arms that used to hold him. Hands that would just as often slap as caress him. The alabaster column of her throat. The crimson petals of her lips. The raven waterfall of her hair._ _

__Gone, gone, gone._ _

__Her ebony eyes dissolved at last._ _

__Goodbye, my dearest love. Forgive me._ _

 

***

 

Vegeta snarled at the shadow of himself. Contempt, utter hatred radiated from him like the golden waves of ki that spiked his hair high.

“You,” he raged. “There is no corner you can run to, no crevice you can crawl in, no asteroid that can propel you far enough -” Vegeta burst forward, charging the Dark Prince with a flurry of fists and feet, teeth and ki, blood and smoke spilling from each of them. Vegeta drove the shadow back, pushing Daiku and Nappa and the lavender haired boy out of his way with only the pressure of his ki flaring out around him. He screamed his rage at the foul thing that had killed his mother, that had tortured him, that had ruined his son and murdered his daughter.

“Everything I did, everything I did under your influence -” Vegeta hurled a volley of sharp punches to the miasma’s face, black ooze splashing with every impact, “Of all of it, of ALL OF IT, do you know what my GREATEST CRIME was?” Crushing hammer blows to the miasma’s chest were like punctuation between the spat syllables from the Prince’s teeth. “My one -” punch “unpardonable -” smash “sin?!” The Dark Prince crumpled to the ground and Vegeta pinned the miasma’s face to a displaced rock from the Jardin market square.

The miasma, that Dark Prince, choked out its wheezing laughs. “Too… numerous… to count,” it smirked, its face in a rictus grin of insanity and pain.

 "Believing you,” Vegeta snarled, smashing his foot through the miasma’s head. “Believing a single word you ever spoke inside my head. Believing that I was only a killer, that I was only a destroyer. Believing that my people were better off with me fighting a fucking dozen galaxies away. Believing that everything I loved would rot away to death under my touch. Believing that I was responsible for Tarble’s death, believing that I was responsible for the deaths of those Saiyans __you killed!__ ”

The oozing black chunks that used to be the miasma’s head gathered together under Vegeta’s boot, trying to reform, but he stomped it down again. __Squelch.__ Black smoke swirled around them and from its smashed, oozing head, the Dark Prince began to laugh once more. “Did these speeches come as a consequence of your new power, Vegeta?” it mocked him. “Did you practice this on your way here? Did __she__  teach it to you, this habit of thinking you’re more than a murdering madman?”

“Fuck you.” Vegeta hauled the rotting, oozing thing up from the ground and ripped its head away before it could rematerialize fully.

But still it laughed -

And the smoke swirled around them.

 

“Vegeta,” it smiled at him from a yard away. “You can take me apart all day, but I’ll never falter. I’ll never be as weak as you, I’ll never be weak enough for you to kill. I’ll take you again, and I’ll take your precious friends,” it rasped, the head flopping over on its side to stare at the stunned and silent Nappa and Daiku, “And when every single Saiyan is dead, I’m going to use your pretty. golden. body. to kill that __stupid bitch__ who thought she could __save you__.”

“Her name is Bulma.” Vegeta swung his arms back and like lightning, power snapped them forward with an almighty burst of light and heat and energy. Vegeta screamed, channeling everything into this one burst.

The miasma came apart and Vegeta watched the mirror image of his own face begin to disintegrate with a scream.

When the brililant light faded, only wisps of smoke remained.

“Vegeta!” Nappa rushed at him. “Holy shit! Holy shit!” Vegeta was trying to catch his breath and Nappa clapping him on the back only winded him further. “What the fuck happened? When did you go Super?!”

"Nappa,” Vegeta let his head loll back, finally beginning to feel his breath coming back to normal, “Shut up a minute.”

“No way. I’ve been stuck with this asshole,” he jerked a thumb over one shoulder to indicate Daiku, “For fuckin’ months by my time, training my ass off, and you show up a-oh-fuckin-kay, bright as the goddamn sun, and beat the holy hell out of the thing that was __supposed__  to kill us all. Oh, no, there will be no shutting up. How the __fuck__ did this happen!”

Daiku began to chuckle. There were few Saiyans as vulgar as Nappa, but none could match him when he was angry or when he was celebrating. Which of those emotions this particular display actually was, Daiku hadn’t yet decided. He clasped Vegeta’s shoulder. “Your highness.”

“Daiku,” Vegeta acknowledged the taller man with a nod.

“Nappa!” said Nappa, pointing at himself. “Now that we all remember each other’s fuckin’ names, __HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!?”__

Vegeta laughed in spite of himself, Nappa was worse than a wolf on a carcass - he wouldn’t leave it alone until he had his morsel. “I broke free of that filth a day ago, maybe more, maybe less. It kept almost all of my ki, I was crippled. I couldn’t even fly. I was hiding out, hoping the right hunters would spot me sooner than my father’s battalion, and … she did.” Vegeta smiled softly, almost imperceptibly. “Bulma found me, I don’t even really know how. The Keiyaku, I suppose. We…” he felt his face growing hot. “Anyway, once I was restored, the injury to my system must have been so grave that the recovery catapulted me all the way to,” he made a sweeping gesture to indicate himself entirely, “all of this.”

The three warriors had started walking, back in the direction of the fallen Queen and the incapacitated King. As Pea bled to death, the King’s eyes had gone empty, hollowed out and he had collapsed beside her. Vegeta had been overcome by his rage, and had leapt on the miasma, but now that rage was fading and cold daylight striking in.

The Queen was dead.

The King, bound to her by a Keiyaku some 50 years strong, was almost certainly being pulled into her death.

A boy knelt beside the King, shaking him and trying to revive him.

“Boy.” Vegeta spoke softly, sternly. Just the way he had spoken to the boy mourning his mother in pain and anger. The way you spoke to a child who may mistake you for an enemy.

Still squatting down on powerful thighs, the boy turned lavender eyes up at his father. Vegeta saw his mother’s coloring, her same fiery eyes, the same cut of her jaw. He saw, too, his own nose and brow and felt a power radiating from the boy that could only be Saiyan.

His son.

“Father.” Trunks picked himself up from the ground, straightening his spine and drawing up to his full height. He was a little taller than his father, he noticed now. His true father. The Dark King had always loomed tall above him and all others he’d commanded… Trunks had never noticed it before, but the Dark King must have either made himself taller or been hovering that whole time. Trunks smirked at the vanity of the monster.

Vegeta recognized that smirk.

Trunks looked at his father, this real and true version of him, and realized he possessed no such weakness, no such vanity. He is what he is. Right now, hair still blond, eyes still blue - he was a Super Saiyan. He felt much more powerful than Queen Pea had felt. Sparks and crackles of electricity irregularly zapped around him and the force radiating out from him was impenetrable.

Trunks thought that this sight would drive many mad with fear. That it would be the last sight many would see before their death. His father had blasted away the miasma that had ruined an entire race in the future - his father had blown that miasma, and that future, away like dust. And yet, despite all this, Trunks looked at his father and felt a kind of safety - and a kind of pride - he had never felt before.

Vegeta stepped forward, offering Trunks his arm. Trunks put his own arm forward and Vegeta clasped it just under the elbow in a warrior’s acknowledgement. Trunks gripped Vegeta’s arm in the same way, and they flashed each other twin grins. Vegeta hauled the boy closer to him.

“Trunks, I -”

“Father, I -”

They spoke simultaneously, and neither finished. As Trunks hooked his free arm over his father’s shoulder in a hug, the boy vanished. In less than a breath, in half of a heartbeat, in the blink of an eye - Trunks was gone.

 

 

***

 

Just outside Jardin, Bulma’s flight boots touched the battlefield.

 

Above her, the miasma began to laugh.

 


	16. Goodbye, Part Two

Trunks was back in the grey mist between timelines. What happened? 

_ Did my father destroy the miasma? Is the Dark King dead? Is that why this happened?  _

Shapes and windows into other worlds swirled in the grey-blue mist, opening anew and popping shut, flickering into possibility and out of existence with terrifying speed. 

_ What do I do now?  _ Trunks wondered to himself. Should he try to find his own time? Could he find his own time? 

“Trunks! Trunks!” Faint and from a great distance, a small voice called for him. “Truuuuuunks!” It was a woman’s voice, or a girl’s. One that felt so, so familiar but that he could not place. It was not his mother, it was not Beri. 

The boy pointed his boots in the direction of the call, and began to walk through the chaotic, pearlescent mist. 

  
  


\---

 

Bulma’s head snapped up, eyes narrowing as they caught sight of the shadow looming above her. It laughed. 

_ There you are, motherfucker.  _

Bulma had never been quite so angry - she shook, vibrating with the feeling. This was him, the monster. The Dark Prince. Murderer of her child, torturer of her husband. Fucker-upper of her life. 

The worst mistake it had ever made was to hurt her family. Whatever quarrel it had with the Saiyans, whatever quarrel it had ever had with anyone else, it might have survived. But it would not survive this - it would not survive  _ her.  _

She used the flight boots to rocket up, right into The Dark Prince’s face. “What’s so funny?” she glared. 

“He thinks I’m dead,” the miasma chuckled. “And he thinks you’re safe.” The miasma reached its stolen hand out, grabbing for her neck. 

Bulma deftly dodged. It was fast, but she was pissed. She was pissed and she was fearless in her fury. She’d been the most reckless pilot on Earth, and this was no different. She rolled and shot a missle out of the flight control arm. It exploded in the Dark Prince’s laughing face. 

“I’m just fuckin’ fine,” Bulma snarled. 

“Ow,” the miasma rolled its head - literally rolled - from one arm to another and carried it like a jack o’lantern in his hands. “I didn’t think you could do that. Vegeta’s memories, all the time I spent huddled inside his mind, I never saw you use your teeny, tiny, pathetic ki as a weapon.” 

“That wasn’t ki. See, I have a theory.”

The miasma stared.

“I know how you fight. You seem… indestructible. This place,” Bulma swung her arms wide, “is blasted to hell, but you’re fine. Saiyans don’t have weapons like we have where I’m from. So I found myself wondering…” 

The miasma lunged forward, but Bulma skated up and back through a cloud. She raised her voice, skating back and back, outside the Dark Prince’s grasp. “I found myself wondering! Do ki blast just make you stronger?!”

The miasma stopped, staring again, and in its black features Bulma thought she spied fear - just a moment, just a tic. The Dark Prince glared at her, but didn’t move. 

“I wondered if a different type of energy might be able to stop you. Something that isn’t alive, something that isn’t malleable, manipulable like ki. Something that isn’t connected to the energy of consciousness.” She leveled the gauntlet-like flight controller with one arm, bracing herself as if she were about to fire a rifle. She pointed her closed fist at the miasma’s face. “See… you’re not alive. You emulate life. You need an outside source of life energy to keep your shit together.” 

The miasma began to back away and at about 10 meters, it turned fully around and streaked back toward Jardin. It was well and truly panicked now. Everything that horrible creature had spoken was true - the infuriating, radiating light of the woman’s intelligence was what he had always feared. Someone saw through the terror he spread. Someone saw through the blackness he poisoned them with. 

_ Her. _

The Dark Prince stopped over top of the stunned Vegeta, Nappa and Daiku as they tried to make sense of the King’s inert form, of the lavender haired boy’s sudden disappearance. Next to them, the Crown’s Battalion landed and Nappa rushed to intercede before they blasted Vegeta on sight. Nappa gestured wildly, communicating the victory he thought they had. The commander of the assembled Saiyan soldiers ordered his men to attack Vegeta anyway. Mayhem broke loose, Saiyans fighting Saiyans. The Queen lay dead, body trampled by her own soldiers in their determination to murder her son. Daiku, Nappa and Vegeta lashed out as the battalion closed like a vice around them - backs to backs, snarling, fighting for their Prince’s life.

_ This is my chance,  _ the miasma thought.  _ Spread. Infect. Create chaos. Live. Live. Live.  _

The miasma came loose from the form it had held together - it lost Vegeta’s body, it lost Vegeta’s face. It lost its form entirely, becoming a black cloud of oily smoke that hovered over Jardin. 

Bulma caught up. “So, I wondered!” she yelled, in the same tone of voice and volume that she’d used to snatch attention back at board meetings and scientific conferences back on Earth after some macho douche talked over her. “What would mechanical energy do to you? Or a shockwave? Or kinetic energy? What would a chemical explosive do to you?” 

_ I know you can hear me, you evil cloudy bastard. _

Bulma pointed her fist up, tapped on the arm control for a few seconds, and out sprayed a cloud of sticky, white mist. 

“It freaked me out, the first time I saw a spider here. I thought, shit, I’m off Earth and there are still spiders?” She flew a slow circle around the billowing black cloud. 

**“WHAT IS THIS?”** the miasma boomed.  **“STOP IT.”**

“This is something I made, just for you. A gift, from the universe’s most brilliant scientist - from the world’s angriest mother and wife.”

The miasma stretched itself, recoiled, stretched again, recoiled again. 

“You bound Vegeta in a prison within himself. You gave me the idea for this. I thought, what if you tried your little smoke trick and I gummed you up? And then I remembered the spiders,” Bulma laughed bitterly. “I thought the first thing that I’d invent on this planet would be pants, or bath towels. Instead, I recreated spider silk and bound it to my own homecooked version of cyclonite, lithium, and oil. At home, it’s called C4.” 

**“GET IT OFF ME, GET THIS OFF OF ME.”**

“No.” Bulma said, affect flat. “You killed my baby girl. You snuffed out every hope of my son. You tortured my husband for years.” Bulma opened her palm and a little parachute attached to a cable flew up into the center of the miasma. “You,” she said, finger hovering over the final key press on the flight controller, “can go fuck yourself.”

Fireworks exploded in the patchy grey sky over Jardin.

 

\---

 

Trunks heard an almighty explosion from one window, fire and hail seemed to rain down. The window snapped shut, a timeline closed to him forever. 

“Truuuuuuuuuuuuuunks!” Still the voice called, and so he walked forward as one window after another disappeared in the grey mist. Possibilities closed all around him, and far in the distance, but straight ahead, he saw one wide window opening onto a beaten red road, the castle at Asket looming large above the verdant fields. 

Home. 

“Trunks!”

 

\---

 

“Stop in the name of the King!” Bulma screamed, hovering just above the fray. The Crown’s Battalion stopped dead in their tracks, faces upturned to see Bulma floating there above their heads, wreathed in the fiery explosion above like some heathen goddess descended to punish their treason. “Stop in the name of the King!” 

Bulma landed, stumbling and falling to her knees as the flight boots caught the ground at an awkward angle. Nappa, who happened to be nearest to her, snatched her up from the ground, throwing her on his back to keep her away from the other soldiers. He neednt worry, though, they were frozen in place, necks still craned toward the sky as they watched the fireball blossom like a sun at its death - like hellfire - like the apocalypse - like the end.

“What… in the name of the gods… did you do?” Nappa looked at Bulma over his shoulder, equal parts amusement and terror riding his face. 

“Don’t fuck with my kids,” Bulma said, sliding off Nappa’s back to stand up unaided, “Ever.”

Nappa stood, watching the sky explode, as the Princess kicked off her flight boots to run full bore into Vegeta’s arms. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dudes, there is only one chapter left after this. I will likely release it in one big part.


	17. Chapter 17: End

Final Chapter: End

 

Vegeta carried Bulma in his arms as he flew. She was sleeping, frowning a little, face nestled into his chest. He pressed her into him a little more tightly, feeling her thin bones and meager ki. She was small, she was weak - but she was the mightiest warrior he had ever known.

Nappa and Daiku flew behind them. Nappa had slung the still unconscious King over one shoulder. Daiku carried a bundle, wrapped in the crimson cloth of the King’s cape - the body of Queen Pea. Behind them, the chastised and much humiliated Crown’s Battalion flew, like an honor guard… like a funeral procession.

The flight from Jardin to Akset was quick and uneventful. There were no enemies left to fight - only the sad spectre of death, who remained untouchable.

***

Vegeta landed at his estate, Daiku and Nappa behind him. 

“Nappa,” Vegeta called. “Take my father inside - maybe the Namekians know what’s wrong with him.”

Nappa said nothing - he just obeyed.

“My lord,” Daiku asked, stepping forward with his bundle, “What should… where should… The Queen?”

Vegeta swallowed. “Take her... take her to the antefasting battleground in the courtyard of the castle. Tell her maids to prepare her for the funeral rite.” Vegeta walked away, back to Daiku and to the shell that was his mother, never once looking up from his wife’s sleeping face.

He opened the door to their estate, which was warm and dark. A light was on in the kitchen and he could hear someone chopping at the board - Beri making dinner, he would be willing to bet. He turned away from that hall and carried Bulma into their bedroom, laying her down on their bed.

Vegeta sat on the floor next to that bed, and listened to his wife breathe. He looked to his left, at the open door to the bathing chamber and the splintered wood and plaster that used to be the roof of the room. His mother had crashed through it, to save him from his paralyzing fear and grief when he thought Bulma was dead.

She shifted in the bed now, and he watched one of her arms reach for his side. He laid his hand over hers so that she wouldn’t awaken, thinking he wasn’t there.

He looked to his right, into the little nursery where he could feel his children sleeping. Two strong kis, sleeping peacefully, unaware of the sacrifice their grandmother had made to safeguard them. Vegeta remembered the way she’d watched them as he held them, remembered the way she’d made sure that he hadn’t dropped them.

But she was gone now.

Vegeta removed his hand from Bulma’s, pulled his legs up to his chest and buried his head between his knees. When the Namekians came to tell him of his father’s condition, they would apologize for rousing him from his sleep. They would equate his red-rimmed eyes with his exhaustion.

Only Bulma, barely awake in the bed above him, would know the truth. She heard the shaky, silent sobs and said nothing - a Prince must have his Pride.

 

***

 

It was blackest night as Dende stood over the King, in his meditative sway, scanning the King for injuries as the other Namekians stood around him, heads bowed in conversation in their own language.

“The queen is dead?” Nail asked Piccolo. “What will this mean?”

Piccolo scowled. “I don’t know. Will the King honor our agreement or will he lash out and expel us? Will the King die, with our fates left then to the Prince and Princess?”

Tremolo placed one hand on Piccolo’s shoulder. “The Princess would certainly allow us to remain. She is kind and just, and she is an outsider as well.”

“Brothers,” began the fourth Namekian fighter, “Brothers, what if we…”

Three faces turned toward him and in unison, they glared and said, “No.”

“Brothers! The Queen saved our species! She saved our lives. Certainly __she__ merits breaking that taboo?"

“No, Forte,” Piccolo said. “Saiyans die. That sacred ceremony… if we used it, if every Saiyan saw it, we would be inundated with them, begging petty favors... and even worse, what if word got off the planet? What greater evils would we attract?”

Forte looked down at his feet.

“No. That ceremony must remain secret.”

Dende broke out of his trance. “Brothers. Will you go get one of the Saiyan men?”

Piccolo left the room, padding silently down the hall to Vegeta’s room, where he shook the Prince awake. He was sorry to do it, despite his own hard feelings for the man, since Vegeta looked like hell. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes were bleary and red. He looked much like a Namekian did after weeks without water - on the verge of collapse.

“What?” Vegeta snarled, slapping the green hand off his shoulder.

“Dende requires you,” and saying no more, Piccolo left.

Vegeta went to his ruined bathroom, splashed water on his face. Bulma left the bed and walking behind him, slid her arms through his and folded her hands together on his chest. She nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck. “Hello husband,” she breathed against him.

Vegeta let his head fall back against her shoulder, and stood there a moment, basking in the silence. “Are you alright?” she asked him, letting go and moving around to stand between him and the sink.

“Bulma…” he looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read. It was many things - love, fear, anger, confusion, loss, joy. And pain. Such pain that she couldn’t bear looking at it, and she pulled him into her arms, wrapping them around his neck and kissing him deeply, lips and lips, tongues and tongues. He ran his hands down her sides and lifted her up onto the sink, losing her lips, but locking his mouth around her throat.

“Vegeta,” she breathed his name into his hair as his tongue swept downward over her pulse. Nimble fingers danced up his shoulders to unfasten the neck of the suit he still wore. He flexed his muscles and his ki and shreds of fabric littered the room like confetti. He wrapped his hands around her waist and pulsed again, and Bulma felt something like electricity snap all over her body as her own suit fell away in tatters.

He picked her up off the sink and held her under her soft, creamy thighs. She pressed her nails into his shoulders, clinging to him both for safety and in terrible, ferocious need. He was hard and pressing into her belly as he licked and nipped at her neck, her throat, her peaked nipples. She leaned away from him, just to make a little room to maneuver, but he growled and backed her into the the cool tile wall of the bathing chamber. His grip on her thighs tightened and he lifted her up until her breasts were at his mouth and his tip was pressing just slightly against her entrance, throbbing and trembling with his racing heartbeat.

“I need you,” he growled into her chest, “Not just now,” he panted, voice dark and gravelly, “but forever.”

“Then take me,” Bulma whispered, kissing the top of his head, “When ever you need me… forever.”

His hands brought her down as his hips brought her up and she felt him fill her - body and mind. He raced himself in and out of her, and Bulma heard the wall crack behind her with the force of his thrusts. Nothing hurt because she was filled with his strength, his ki. She ravaged his back with her nails, breasts bouncing until he buried his face between them. He slowed his pace and watched as he glided in and out of her, removing himself almost completely before burying himself again to the hilt, and he watched, too, the way Bulma’s pleasure played across her face.

“I love you,” they said together before toppling over the edge.

 

***

Afterward, Vegeta went to see what the healer wanted and Bulma went to the nursery to check on the babies.

 _ _What would happen to the King?__ She wondered. __If we were only on Earth, I could gather the dragon balls and bring the Queen back, fix whatever’s wrong with the King.__

Bulma remembered her wish, she thought about the dragon balls. As she fed the twins, she thought about all the people she’d left behind on the Earth. Goku, Chi Chi, Mom and Dad. She pictured all the faces she’d ever known on Earth and then she remembered.

 

Kami created the dragon balls.

 

Kami looked a lot like the little Namekian that healed her. Like the Namekians who had been here, guarding her children.

 

Was Kami a Namekian?

 

__Do these Namekians have dragon balls?!_ _

__

Bulma ran down the hallway, both babies still pressed to her chest.

 

***

 

“So, Prince Vegeta, that’s the whole of it,” explained Dende. “Your father isn’t injured, internally or externally, he’s just… not here,” he said, gesturing to the King’s body. 

“It’s the shock,” Vegeta said, “of losing his bond with my mother. It… it almost happened to me, when Bulma was nearly dead. The miasma kept me from going into complete shock, used the lack of connection to finish its hold on me. For my father, the shock must be complete. His body will die within a few hours, if past cases hold true.”

Dende looked down, feeling sadness wash over him. The King and Queen were the only reason that Dende was alive and well, the only reason his species had survived the destruction of their planet during the Cold War. “I’m sorry, Prince Vegeta. I wish I… I wish I knew how to fix this.”

Just then, Bulma burst through the door, topless with both babies happily eating against her breasts. “DO YOU HAVE DRAGON BALLS?!” she cried out, breathless, causing all six listeners to jump back half a foot each. When they only stared, she repeated herself, “Do you have dragon balls?”

Dende frowned. “Is that some kind of medicine? Is it a spell?”

“No, it’s how I got here! I made a wish on the dragon balls of earth, and they grant wishes, and they can do anything! They could bring back the Queen!”

Piccolo’s face darkened. “No. We have no such items.”

“Yes. We do,” overrode Forte. “Yes, we do. We have never used them on this planet, but we had them at home and we have them here. We used them to sanctify the Allewater - they’re buried at the river’s mouth.”

“Forte!” Piccolo screamed.

“Brother! The Queen saved our people! The Princess already knows they exist! We may not always be able to help, but where we __can__ help, __we must help!”__

“We cannot use them in the open! You must think of the consequences!”

“Wait,” Vegeta spoke now, pinning Forte to the spot with his gaze. “You possess something that can save my mother and father?”

“Yes.”

“And you,” Vegeta turned his eyes to Piccolo, “would you allow us to use them on the condition of total secrecy?”

“It’s impossible - the whole sky will darken, a massive dragon will appear and shine with otherworldly light - people will see it from miles and miles around. Rumors will spread. This planet, and both our peoples, will be in danger if we do this,” Piccolo lectured. “Understand this - if I could save your mother without risking my own people, I would do it.”

“I know a way,” Vegeta said. “Gather these dragon balls and meet me at the royal training grounds.”

Bulma raced back down the hallway to give the twins to Beri for just a little while longer, as Tremolo and Forte made for the door. Nail and Piccolo stayed to hear Vegeta’s plan, and they agreed to it. Vegeta sent for Nappa and Daiku once more.

***

 

Nappa carried the King, and Daiku carried the Queen. They laid both in the center of the training grounds, as instructed by the Prince.

“But Vegeta,” Nappa complained, “Why are we here?”

“Nappa. Daiku.” Vegeta called them both over to his position at the controls. “What you are about to witness, you must never speak of - to anyone - on pain of death. Your wives will be here, so they will know, and will feel nothing amiss in your bonds. But you must never speak of it aloud. And you must never tell anyone my mother was dead.”

“Was?” Daiku asked.

“Swear now, or leave,” Vegeta told them both, ki flaring into the golden glow of the Super Saiyan.

“I swear, Prince Vegeta,” said Daiku.

“Yeah, yeah, I fuckin’ swear,” grinned Nappa, even as Daiku slapped him upside the head.  
  
At the edge of the training grounds, Bulma obtained the same oaths from Choy and Beri, just as the Namekians arrived - dragon balls in tow.

Vegeta reached out and wrapped Bulma in the sunlike radiance of his ki, allowing her to step into the training grounds. “It may get hard to breathe when the walls are closed,” he warned her, again.

“I know. I still want to be here,” she said.  
  
Cress, Bulma’s favorite castle guard, landed at the edge of the training ground. “Ready, your highnesses!” he shouted.

“Remember! Break the barrier after one minute, Cress!” she shouted back to him.

“Yes, your highness!” Cress called back, as Vegeta raised the walls of the training ground around them. As soon as they were up, as soon as they were sealed in, Vegeta raised his power as far as it could go, holding the Namekians and Bulma in the light of his power. No one in the outside world would ever see what was about to happen here.

Dende summoned the dragon in the lilting, bubbling tongue of his people. It shot up before them and spoke with a mountainous, rumbling voice. “ ** **I WILL GRANT YOU THREE WISHES.”****

 _ _Three?__ Bulma thought.

Dende, who didn’t want to be trapped in the training grounds any longer than he had to, spoke at once. “Dragon Porunga! Please bring Queen Pea back to life!”

The dragon trilled, and spoke again, “ ** **IT IS DONE. SPEAK YOUR NEXT WISH.”****

Dende looked back at his companions. “What else should we wish for?”

“Nothing else,” spoke Nail. “We agreed to this wish alone.”

Dende fixed his eyes on Bulma. “Princess? Any wish?”

Bulma looked up into the dragon’s eyes. “Great dragon Porunga! I wish to know the way back to Earth!”

The dragon trilled. “ ** **IT IS DONE.”****

And Bulma thought about home - and suddenly she knew the way to take through the galaxies and star systems between her and the planet of her birth.

“We do not have a third wish, great dragon” the Queen spoke, standing, as the King’s eyes fluttered open.

“ ** **THEN FAREWELL.”**** The dragon spoke its last, and the dragon balls shot out from the center of the grounds to slam into the raised walls, just before Cress broke the ki beacon at the top. The Namekians rushed around to pick up the balls, as the Saiyans whooped and war cried in their joy as the resurrected Queen kissed the revived King.

 

***

 

Trunks stepped through the last window out of the grey world and into a world that looked much like the one he’d left his mother in. “Trunks! There you are! Where have you been?!” a girl his age barreled into him, throwing him in a headlock immediately and rubbing his hair so hard it hurt. “Papa’s been looking for you everywhere. It’s time for the coronation, or did you freakin’ forget?!”

The girl’s hair looked like it could be black, but when she moved against the light of the sun, Trunks could tell it was a deep purple. Her eyes, her plum eyes, shone with laughter and mirth.

“Trunks? What’s wrong with you?”

“Cipolline?”

“Yeah?” she frowned, looking at her twin brother in pure confusion. “Did you hit your head or something?”

“No, I…” Trunks tried to remember why he was crying, for tears were rolling down his face. But the dark memories of his past were being overwritten with happy times. Training with his father and his sensei and his sister. Picnics and laboratory experiments with his mother. Gone were the deaths, were the tortures, were the terrible things he lived through in reality. It was dissolved, like a nightmare is dissolved by the warm sunlight and the touch of your mother’s hand.

“Trunks, why are you crying?” Cipolline asked.

“I don’t know!” Trunks smiled, as the last vestiges of that dark world disappeared forever. “Today’s a happy day! Father will be crowned King, mother Queen. And I,” he puffed out his chest, “Will be the new Prince Vegeta!”

“You will not. You know mother did away with that. We’ll keep our own names, fool.”

Trunks grinned. “Race you back home?”

Cipolline streaked off toward the castle, laughing brightly in the living sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for this story! I hope you all loved it. PLEASE leave me a comment telling me what you liked, hated, or had questions about in the story! I'll do my best to answer you all. 
> 
> The next story will be Kyodai - it will take place in the same universe as Keiyaku and Kotonari, but Kyodai takes place on Earth! A certain long haired Saiyan will be the main feature.


End file.
